James David Landis (born June 30, 1942) is an American author and a former publisher and editor in chief of William Morrow and Company.
He is the son of Russian/Polish Jewish parents Eve (Saltman), a teacher, and Edward Landis, a lawyer and amateur banjo player.
He was educated in Springfield public schools, where he played football and was captain of the tennis team and won the Williams College Book Prize; and Yale College, from which he graduated in 1964, magna cum laude and a junior-year Phi Beta Kappa and where he wrote for The Yale Record, a humor magazine.
While in high school he earned spending money playing the alto saxophone and clarinet in a jazz dance quartet.
[3] The writers he edited and/or published included Robert Pirsig, Leroi Jones, Ken Follett, Pamela Des Barres, Nicholas Delbanco, James Clavell, Mick Fleetwood, Jacqueline Susann, Tariq Ali, Morris West, Sidney Sheldon, Harry Crews, John Irving, Salvador Dalí, Whitley Streiber and Patricia Nell Warren.