The Emerald Lake Books’ executive team consists of our founder, Tara R. Alemany, and our art director, Mark Gerber. We work closely with the rest of our team to ensure the best possible experience for our authors.
Tara R. Alemany, Founder and Owner
Tara Alemany defies a simple definition. She is a multi-award-winning author of seven books. She is also a speaker, business consultant and publisher, as well as the host of the Publish with Purpose virtual summit and a recovering serial entrepreneur.
Although she’s started many businesses during her career, her favorite by far is Emerald Lake Books, which she founded in 2014 and co-owns with her best friend, Mark Gerber. This boutique publishing company provides a unique blend of business coaching with publishing to help its authors succeed, whether it’s their first book or their fiftieth! Emerald Lake Books specializes in working with positive people who want to integrate a book into their marketing plan or sales funnel to build their business or brand.
Using a unique goal-oriented approach to publishing, Tara combines her business and publishing knowledge to help her authors set and attain goals for their readers, their brands and their books.
Tara’s award-winning book, Publish with Purpose, reveals the unique process developed by Emerald Lake Books to help their authors set and attain their goals.
In addition to publishing, consulting, writing and speaking, Tara serves as a facilitator for the Independent Book Publishers Association’s member roundtables. In her spare time, she is a winemaker, a military Mom to 2 young adults (one of each), and is owned by a black cat.
Mark Gerber, Art Director and Partner
Over the years, Mark Gerber has won multiple awards for his work, which ranges from book cover illustrations and designs to newsletters to advertising campaigns. He has been creating powerful graphics and realistic images since the early ’80s, each designed for maximum impact and client satisfaction.
His work has been used by major publishing houses on books by Danielle Steele, Stephen King and Eric Van Lustbader, who now writes the Jason Bourne thrillers, as well as publications like the Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor. For Hasbro, he illustrated the playing cards for the 50th anniversary of the board game “Clue.”
Mark has also worked with many other national and regional advertising agencies and smaller companies before joining the executive team of Emerald Lake Books in 2016. A partial list of Mark’s past and present clients includes organizations such as Billboard Magazine, Emerald Lake Books, Friendly’s, Lego, Lever 2000, Litchfield Distillery, Penguin Group, Random House, Rangen Aquaculture. the Regional YMCA of Western Connecticut, Simon & Schuster, Shelter Rock Winery, Sudler & Hennessey, the Vein Institute of Connecticut, the Wall Street Journal, White Silo Winery and Yankee Candle, to name just a few.
Mark’s versatility as an artist allows him to apply a range of techniques and styles to suit the finished product to the client’s needs. He is equally comfortable creating realistic paintings or cartoons and caricatures, in both traditional and digital mediums. And this diversity of talents has been a great asset to many of our authors.
His skills as a designer enable him to serve our clients’ needs, no matter the desired product. Whether it’s creating forms or designing logos, billboard advertising or large scale banners, Mark has done it and just about everything in between, too.
He has created the marketing collateral necessary for corporate branding, including logos, brochures, business cards, letterhead, pitch decks, one-sheets, images for packaging and advertising (for print and online), etc. And his extensive background in the publishing industry has provided him with opportunities to work with magazines, newspapers, books and more.
One of Mark’s greatest strengths is in working collaboratively with our clients to understand their needs, as well as the intended use of the material he’s creating, so the finished product achieves its purpose.
Originally from Idaho, Mark now lives in Connecticut and enjoys coaching girls’ lacrosse and spending time with his two grown daughters.
To see samples of some of Mark’s illustrations, check out his portfolio.
