1)      Mark, tell us a little bit about Lady’s Night and why you think it’s being received so well?

Lady's Night is a story that I had been wanting to write for about five years.  In Queens, where I am from, there are a lot of areas with street walkers and prostitutes, and whenever I would drive by those locations (not as a customer...LOL), I would say to myself "one of these girls’ life story could be turned into a book." So I just let that idea grow inside of me and one night I drove past one of the "tracks" as they are known as in the streets and it was like I just started getting flooded with ideas and I went home and started typing the story and it just flowed outta me and I finished writing it in thirty days.

As far as it being received so well, number one I give that credit to God, but secondly I think it is because when I wrote that story I could literally see every scene and it was like I felt like I literally knew each character to the point where I could pick up the phone and call them.  And whenever I write and have such a close connection to the scenes and the characters, I think that translates to the readers and they connect to the characters in an emotional way, and it is that emotional connection to the story that helps it to be received so well. 

2)      What is the Dogism controversy?

The Dogism controversy is basically my own little theory that cheating and infidelity is a sickness / disease.  I got that idea when I would constantly hear that alcoholism and gambling and habits similar to that could all be classified as an "ism" and called a disease.  So in my mind and based on my experience, both personal and second hand, I came to the conclusion that there has to be some kind of disease / sickness that makes men stray, similar to how it is a disease / sickness that makes an alcoholic drink.

3)      When did you know you wanted to write novels?

When I was in High School I told my parents that I was gonna write a book.  So I think I knew for a while. Did I think I would be doing it for a living? No, I didn't.  But now when I look back at things I had to write for school, going back as far as elementary school, and I look at the comments that teachers would put on my papers, I can see that I had a talent for creative writing and I never really knew it.

4)      You have started a successful up-and-coming publishing company. What made you decide to make this move?

One thing that I knew from early on in my life was that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.  So the timing was right to start my own publishing company and I was also tired of the horror stories that many of the small publishing companies were putting their authors through.  So I was like, "I can do this, minus making the authors go through all of the drama."  Basically it boils down to combining my passion for writing with my passion for being an entrepreneur.  And thank God that in this country there is nothing that you can not do if you put your mind to it.

5)      Q-Boro has a wide spectrum of authors and books from different genres. Do you think that sets Q-Boro apart from some of the other small AA houses?

I think it sets us apart but at the same time I also think that it is a common sense thing to do.  Will certain types of books perform better in the market based on the more dominant trend at any particular time? Absolutely.  But can anyone predict with certainty when that trend will change?  I don't think so.  So we basically want to position ourselves in a way where we can respond to the changes in the marketplace when and if they occur.  And some books may not do as well as others, but what happens is as a publisher we begin to understand first hand what drives a particular genre, and when the market changes you'll have publishers scrambling to publish books geared towards the new / changing trend and while they will be feeling their way through that new genre, we will be off and running because of the fact that we had our hands in various genres from the start.  Will we do it perfectly? Probably not, but when you are diversified you do not have to be right all of the time.  When you aren't diversified that is when you had better been right 90% of the time.

6)      The name Q-Boro comes from Queens Borough. What is your relationship with Queens and what does it represent to you?

Queens is my home town.  It is where I grew up and it had a great deal of involvement in shaping who I am.  One thing that Queens represents to me is diversity.  In Queens you can be in the nicest area with the million dollar homes and then literally drive five minutes down the street and be in one of the worst areas with the violence and the drugs.  So I wanted to represent that diversity in the books that we will publish.  Queens is urban, but it also has its suburban qualities and characteristics, and it’s hard to say that about Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx.  And one of the other things that Queens represents to me is a sense of history in the entertainment industry.  There is a laundry list of people who came up from Queens, such as Russell Simmons, Irv Gotti, Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Nas, LL Cool J, 50Cent, DJ Clue, and the list goes on and on and on. So I look at that and draw inspiration from it and I say to myself “if they did it and they are from the same place that I'm from, and if I know and used to chill with people like Irv Gotti then why can't I be just as successful?”  So hearing the name Q-Boro helps motivate me to represent and achieve a certain level of success.

7)      What are your thoughts on the state of the publishing industry, and in particular, African American books? 

My thoughts on the state of the publishing industry and in African American books in particular is that we are only at the beginning of something that is gonna be dominant and explosive.  Meaning, the African American books will dominate the top ten positions on the New York Times bestsellers list in the next 3 to 5 years.  And right now it doesn't seem that way, but I predict that it will happen.  Now in late 2005, what is happening is that there seems to be an over-saturation of the African American books, but that is not the case.  It just seems that way simply because the market for the African American books has not expanded to the point where Middle-America is reading the books, and as soon as that happens you will see how under-saturated the market really is.  That is why my hope is that people such as 50Cent is ultra successful with his G-Unit Books, because his name can usher every one of the smaller publishers into that Middle-America demographic that we need in order to be the most dominant genre in publishing.   Right now, we are not even doing anything in comparison to the numbers that the major companies do with some of their top books.  Authors like Janet Evanovich would be considered a major flop if her books did what our top selling books did in terms of sales.  So I never get excited if we go to print four and five times on one book, because that is nothing—literally it is nothing, and what I remind myself each and every day is that a lot of the small publishers will be "shaken out" so to speak, and will not be around when the major sales and the major money starts flowing through the industry because of African American books.  The key is to set yourself up as a writer and/or as a publisher to have the longevity and the infrastructure in place to succeed when the market expands.  And if not, many of the smaller companies will end up like the record company Sugar Hill Records, who were there at the start with chart topping hits, but didn't see the bigger picture like (Queens native) Russell Simmons did with Def Jam.  Look at the parallels from the music and transcend it onto the publishing industry, and I think similar things will happen. 

8)      Can you tell us about any upcoming books you are currently working on?

I wish I could but I have a rule that I never tell what I'm working on.  It’s a superstitious thing.