about me:     My New York publishing experience spans over two decades, five years at Houghton Mifflin Company in Publicity/Marketing, and over fifteen years at Picador USA/St. Martins Press where I was a Senior Acquisitions Editor, as well as a Publicity Director who acquired books.  Having worked in both book publicity and acquisitions, I possess rare insight into how to make a book proposal or manuscript as marketable and publishable as it can be for mainstream submission, or as strong as it can be, for successful self-publication. 
 
      In 1995, I was one of three to launch the hardcover literary fiction and non-fiction imprint at St. Martin's Press: Picador USA, a publishing cousin to the highly regarded Picador UK. Eventually, the focus of Picador USA turned to its most lucrative business of publishing quality trade paperback reprints, and my hardcover acquisitions moved over to St. Martin's Press.
 
      Over the years I acquired and published over 125 hardcover books, both fiction and non-fiction.  Although I love both genres equally, my non-fiction acquisitions outnumbered the novels and short story collections--a reflection of the fact that hardcover readers buy more non-fiction than fiction. (So those of you with a story that could go either way, choosing memoir or narrative non-fiction, over fiction, will clear a few boulders from the already nearly-impossible trek up the treacherous peaks of book-selling).
 
      Every one of the books that I acquired and published at Picador USA/St. Martins is my favorite, although the corporate folks would likely favor the New York Times bestselling sales figures of a select number of titles, including The Pianist, the haunting holocaust memoir by the Polish composer and pianist,  Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose harrowing story of personal survival in Warsaw in the face of genocide and personal loss, inspired Roman Polanski's academy-award-winning film starring Adrian Brody; and the trade paperback of  Anita Diamant's sweeping biblical saga, The Red Tent, which launched a new genre of historical fiction, and claimed a top-ten spot on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for years, selling over 3 million copies.