Welcome to Book Editors: Close Up at http://www.authorlink.com . This Authorlink column provides an intimate look at important book editors in New York and elsewhere. Interviews focus on editors as real people. The columns study their likes, dislikes, preferences, prejudices, and why they buy the books they do.
December Spotlight:
Jennifer Weis
Executive Editor at St. Martin's Press, New York
December 1998
When I was ten, my grandmother died. To assuage her grief, my mother started reading romances by the dozen. I discovered her drawer full of them, and from then on, was an avid reader of romance.
Romance formed the basis of my love for mass market books, and for five years, in the reflected mass market division, I helped to build a list that reflected that love–women in jeopardy novels, historical romance authors like Kat Martin and Rexanne Becnel, along with lead fiction like The Choice by Barry Reed, and other successes, such as Life's Little Destruction Book.
Now, in the hardcover division, my mission is to evelop mass market hardcovers–those best-sellers that should find a home in both hardcover and paperback. In fiction, I look for an edge-of-the-seat story; in nonfiction, a niche, a hot subject and a cogent argument with a persuasive author. It's my personal challenge to find the next John Grisham or Anne Rivers Siddons, and to continue building some of my best authors in mass market, so that one day we can put them into hardcover.
