Sharlene Martin began working in television in
1993 as a partner in Martin/ Walker-Lampley Productions,
a company formed with Bree Walker, a CBS prominent television
news anchor in New York and Los Angeles. Sharlene also spent time
as a reality television developer for Media Savvy, and an Associate
Casting Director with Joy Todd. Her most challenging casting project
for film was the movie "Gods and Generals," with 156 speaking roles.
In
2003, Sharlene began devoting herself full time to her passion
for great stories and formed Martin Literary Management.
Her agency has experienced extraordinary success in sales and
alliances; a quick visit to the pages of the company website verifies
the well-rounded nature of her acquisitions as well as the extensive
sales success that her clients' books have enjoyed.
In the nine years since that time, her remarkable rise in the
publishing industry is demonstrated by a rapidly growing list
of non-fiction sales to such renowned major publishers as Ballantine,
Crown, Regnery, Rodale, Harper Collins, St. Martin's Press, Penguin
Putnam, Sterling Publishing, Grand Central, Simon and Schuster,
as well as a host of boutique publishers for specialized genre
books.
She has represented several New York Times bestselling nonfiction
books including crime journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell's IWant, Suzanne Hansen’s You’ll
Never Nanny in this Town Again, MaryJo Buttafuocco's Getting It Through My Thick Skull,
The Goldman Family’s If
I Did It based on the OJ Simpson murder of Ron Goldman
and Nicole Simpson. Additionally, she represented true crime reporter
Diane Dimond’s investigative book into the “White House Gatecrashers”
entitled Cirque Du Salahi
and CBS Affiliate WRAL’s true crime reporter, Amanda Lamb,
in her past four true crime books at Penguin Putnam.
Many
of her authors have had their books boosted as serial reprints
in publications as prestigious as Readers' Digest, People Magazine,
and the London Times and in the recent past, five of her clients
have appeared on Oprah. Other client appearances include The Today
Show, The View, Fox and Friends, Good Morning America, The Early
Show, 20/20, 48 Hours, Discovery Channel, TruTV, Inside Edition,
The 700 Club, ET, The Insider, ABC Nightline, CNN and HLN News
and Fox News, to name just a few.
Her
successes have encouraged others to work with her, and she is
actively doing business with a host of film and TV companies for
the adaptation of her clients' books into screenplay form. Hallmark
Hall of Fame's acclaimed TV movie in December, 2008 was based
on "Front of the Class," one of the very
first book sales made by MLM.She is the Executive Producer of Lifetime’s movie, The Pregnancy Project and
is Creator/Producer of DEADLY SINS for Discovery ID in partnership
with Dick Clark Productions. She has a multitude of scripted and
unscripted projects in development with the top production companies
and is often sought out for original source material for feature
films.
Publishers, editors and writers who deal with her consistently
express their joy in working with someone who is such an avid
fan of good writing and an enthusiastic guardian and representative
of her clients' work. She employs this personal touch to all of
her business relationships and credits it with her proven record
of success.
She
is the co-author with Anthony Flacco of Publish Your
Nonfiction Book: Strategies for Learning the Industry, Selling
Your Book, and Building a Successful Career(Writer's Digest Books, Nov.
2009). In it, she shares many of the secrets of success that Sharlene
uses to counsel her own clients on their road to authorship.
Sharlene divides her time between Southern California and Seattle,
Washington with her mate of 18 years, Anthony Flacco, an acclaimed
author of true crime, historical crime, and crime novels.