I BELIEVE IN:
Breakfast food (good coffee matters, but who you drink it with matters more), radical honesty, and writing that gets under your skin.
I’M NOT ABOUT:
Should statements. People who say one thing and do another.
YOU CAN FIND ME:
Creatively collaborating. Reading on the beach. At the park with my dog. Forgetting all my passwords.
DAILY RITUALS:
Twenty layers of skin care. I'd like to add more. My days can get improvisational and tplay out like jazz.
My Origin Story
In 2010, I quit my corporate job (along with my excellent health insurance) because a psychic told me my future at writing school was “written in the stars.” Ludicrously, I kind of believed her.
I hadn’t even applied to MFA programs yet, but I told my boss I was leaving to pursue a creative writing degree anyway. Minor cosmic detail.
One year later, I was at The New School, sitting next to a woman who would become my best friend—and the person who would later suggest I try literary agenting. (She already had a glamorous coffee-fetching gig in the industry herself). One night, after a few glasses of wine and a bleary-eyed Craigslist search, I found a listing for a listing for an agency assistant and applied. My first job in book publishing started the following Monday.
I have since spent twelve years helping writers find their voices, their editors, and their audiences—first at Wendy Sherman Associates, then at Irene Goodman Literary Agency. I sold bestselling books. I built careers. I learned the phrases like “getting my ducks in a row” and “not in my wheelhouse” and used them like a champ.
Then, in 2019, I realized it wasn’t fair that only a few authors with large platforms had access to the kind of book coaching that agents offer. How far, I wondered, could any aspiring writer go if they just knew these secrets? Along with Margaret Danko, my partner-in-crime (and by crime, I mean Google Slides), I launched Live Your Bestseller Life as an engine for transparency an antidote to echo-chamber fueled sameness. It was a clunky online rollout with just a handful of hopeful writers, but it was exhilarating to see that I was right: if more folks knew these insider publishing tips, they too would be able to write great books. Plus, I said to Margaret, “I think this Zoom thing is really going to take off.”
Then, in 2023, I co-founded High Line Literary Collective with Victoria Marini. You can read more about that side-hustle here.
I’ve never looked back—though occasionally, I do check in with the psychic.
Putting it all together
EXPERTISE
We’re specialists. We are consistently ranked #1 in lifestyle books on Publishers Marketplace, making us a premier global lifestyle book destination. While we love taking risks, we’re not experimenting with your book. We’re truly in-the-know, staying on top of all nuances and fluctuations in our market as well as pitching to a highly targeted group of editors and publishers with whom we have fostered deep relationships.
APPROACH
At most agencies, you sign with a specific agent and that person is solely responsible for collaboration, correspondence, publicity management and more. At Paper Over Board, we have an “all hands” approach to agenting. While you sign with a primary agent, many hands touch your project on a consistent basis. We offer bespoke proposal development and a publicity rollout program, as well as high-level systems management of contracts, payments and more. Our clients don’t have just one agent; they have the full force of an entire agency behind them at all times.
INNOVATION
In book production, paper-over-board is a type of hardcover binding that forgoes the dust jacket in favor of printing the cover design directly onto the board binding. It’s also a fresh, modern, fresh and creative approach to making books. We have the same “sky’s the limit” thinking that sets us apart.
