About Our Founder

Jane Jordan Browne was the Founder of Multimedia Product Development, Inc., (now known as Browne & Miller Literary Associates) and served as President of the agency up until her death in February, 2003. Jane started Multimedia Product Development, Inc., in Beverly Hills in 1971, from her dining room table. A native of California, she moved the business to Chicago in December 1978, when she married lawyer William O. Petersen. The agency has been located in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building since that time.

Jane was a graduate of Smith College, where she was a Sophia Smith Scholar in history and recipient of the Alpha Award for Creative Writing.  She received her master's degree Magna cum laude in English Language and Literature from UCLA.

Jane had an active, successful career in publishing before becoming an author's representative. She worked as Production Manager for Arts and Architecture Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Playgoer, Inc.   At Hawthorn Books, she was Managing Editor and then head of the juvenile department before she went to Thomas Y. Crowell as Senior Editor in the adult trade department.  She was General Editorial and Production Manager of Macmillan Educational Services, Inc., until she established her own business. She was the author of over one hundred articles for national magazines, and of two books.  She researched and wrote the text for When Towns Had Walls, published by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1970, and was writer for The Architectural Digest Book of Celebrity Homes.  She served as a panelist and featured speaker or agent-in-residence at hundreds of workshops and conferences, including the American Society of Journalists and Authors, California Writers' Guild, Ohio River Writers' Conference, Women in Communications, Romance Writers of America,  National Writers Union, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Children's Reading Round Table, Pacific Northwest Writers' Conference, MWA's Dark and Stormy Nights, Book Expo, and The  Modern Language Association.

As an agent, Jane's greatest successes were The Memory of Eva Ryker by Donald A. Stanwood, which has grossed over a million dollars and was made into a television movie starring Natalie Wood; the controversial On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors:  John Z. DeLorean's Look Inside the Automobile Giant by J. Patrick Wright;  Little Saigon and Laguna Heat (also a 1987 HBO film starring Harry Hamlin and Jason Robards) by T. Jefferson Parker; the novelizations of Poltergeist I and II, The Goonies, The Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; The Dieter by Susan Sussman; the joke books of Larry Wilde (10,000,000 joke books in print--a world's record); all the works of Helen Hooven Santmyer (she represented Ms. Santmyer's estate, as well as the Ohio State University Press, which controls the rights to two of her books, Ohio Town and "...And Ladies of the Club ”);  the international success Chanel: A Woman of Her Own by Axel Madsen; Buster Midnight's Cafe and The Persian Pickle Club, novels by Sandra Dallas; the internationally best-selling Hug Therapy Book,  Hug Therapy II   and countless spin-offs and merchandise; the widely known cult works of "the Rev. Ivan Stang," featuring J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, including The Book of the Sub-Genius; and best-selling Christian novelist Francine Rivers, an RWA Hall of Famer and author of the classic Redeeming Love, among other highly successful titles. Jane sold many celebrity autobiographies, including those of Dorothy Lamour,  Robert Stack and Vincente Minnelli, as well as serious biographies of John Jacob Astor, Gloria Swanson/Joseph Kennedy, Barbara Stanwyck, William Wyler, Sonia Delaunay, Andre Malraux and Jacques Cousteau, and groundbreaking books on social issues, current affairs, science and psychology.

Among the more than four thousand books Jane sold during her agenting career, many have been selections of the Book of the Month Club and the Literary Guild, and have won prestigious awards including the American Institute of Physics Best Science Writing Award, the Golden Medallion Award and the Rita Award from the RWA, the Golden Kite Award from the SCBWI, and Outstanding Science Trade Book from the Children's Book Council, The Anthony Award and the Barry Award, and the Carl Sandburg Award.

Jane was a founding  member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Center for the Book, on the board of the Modern Poetry Association, and a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

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