About Laura Apgar

My name is Laura Apgar, but some of you may know me by my maiden name, Laura Fazio. I’m a commercial fiction editor with nine years of industry experience and three years freelance experience who absolutely loves Romances, Mysteries and Thrillers. Over the course of my career, I’ve edited many New York Times, USA Today, and nationally bestselling novels and stories that have reached millions of people. Prior to freelance editing, I worked as the Editorial Director for the #1 storytelling app, Hooked. I also worked as an editor at two of the big five publishers: Penguin Random House (at Berkley/NAL) and Hachette Book Group (at Little Brown/James Patterson). I live in New Jersey with my husband.

After obtaining my BA from Boston College, I joined the editorial team at Penguin Random House in 2011. I immediately fell in love with the wonderful environment there, where I helped create great fiction and analyzed market trends with delightfully like-minded “book people.” Throughout my five years at PRH, my editorial work focused on two genres I’ve always enjoyed: Romance and Mystery.

Next, I moved to Hachette Book Group where I worked on a new line of James Patterson stories called BookShots. Each BookShot was 30,000-words long, and contained a full arc of an extremely distilled plot. As the imprint’s sole editor during launch, I worked directly with James Patterson. He was an active participant in every element of the publishing process, which made the experience hugely influential to my career. Working with a true master of the form elevated my abilities as an editor and gave me key insights into building commercial publishing programs.

In 2017, I joined the multimedia startup Hooked to help build out another new storytelling platform. Hooked evolved its product from “Chat Fiction” told through text messages to fully fleshed out narrative stories, and also started providing audio and video content. During my time at Hooked, the company grew its audience from 15 million to over 100 million users worldwide. The stories I edited spanned every genre on the map and were written by professionals — including New York Times bestselling authors and Hollywood screenwriters.

So far, my career has been a testament to the fact that good stories come in every genre and format. I hope to help you with yours, whatever it may be.

— Laura Apgar
(née Laura Fazio)