Zebra Books

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Zebra Books
Parent company Kensington Books
Founded1975
FounderWalter Zacharius and Roberta Bender Grossman
Country of origin United States
Headquarters location New York City
Publication types Books
Fiction genres historical romance, romance, western, horror, humor
Imprints Zebra Regency Romance (1985–2005)

Zebra Books is an imprint of American publisher Kensington Publishing Corp. As the company's flagship imprint until the late 80s, it currently publishes women's fiction, romantic suspense and bestselling historical, paranormal and contemporary romance. In the past, it was also an iconic publisher of pulp horror, and it also published westerns and humor. [1]

Contents

History

Zebra Books was launched in 1975 by Walter Zacharius, who had founded Kensington Publishing the previous year, and Roberta Bender Grossman. [2] [3] Both of them had previously worked for paperback house Lancer Books, co-founded by Zacharius in 1961. At the time of launching Zebra, Grossman became the youngest president of a publishing house. By keeping a low budget, small staff, and hiring overlooked if not desperate authors, they built Zebra into a powerhouse of cheap, consumable literature, with $10 million in sales annually by the early 1980s. [4]

Romance publishers

Zebra was built mostly on the historical romance genre. It later expanded the romance genre to embrace paranormal romance, adult Western romance and romance titles aimed at Hispanic, black and gay readers.

Beating the bushes for overlooked writers and eager first-timers willing to start out cheap, the partners developed the careers of prolific and profit-generating authors like Janelle Taylor and Katherine Stone. [2] Best-selling authors on the Zebra list include Fern Michaels, Lisa Jackson, Hannah Howell, Janet Dailey, Victoria Alexander, Mary Jo Putney, and Alexandra Ivy. [5]

Zebra Regency Romance

Zebra Books began publishing traditional Regency romance novels in 1985, classified as Zebra Regency Romance. They generally issued an average of four romance books each month. Zebra Books eventually discontinued its traditional Regency line in October 2005. [6]

Authors who wrote for the Zebra Regency romance line included Kathleen Baldwin, Meredith Bond, [7] Shannon Donnelly, and Debbie Raleigh.

Horror publishers

If romance novels built the house of Zebra in the 1970s, horror made it famous in the 1980s. The imprint's first hit horror title was William W. Johnstone's The Devil's Kiss in 1980. Knowing their authors were not famous enough to sell books on name alone, Zebra focused on sensational covers. Skeletons were such a recurrent theme in Zebra's covers that the imprint is nicknamed "the skeleton farm" among collectors. [4]

Mainstay authors in Zebra's horror roster were Johnstone, Rick Hautala, and Ruby Jean Jensen. Other horror authors published were Bentley Little, Ken Greenhall, Joe R. Lansdale and William M. Carney. [4]

Though still active in the early 1990s, by 1993 Zebra reduced its horror output to two titles per month. In 1996 it stopped publishing horror authors, focusing on romance and suspense instead. [4]

Related Research Articles

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Regency romance

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Mills & Boon is a romance imprint of British publisher Harlequin UK Ltd. It was founded in 1908 by Gerald Rusgrove Mills and Charles Boon as a general publisher. The company moved towards escapist fiction for women in the 1930s. In 1971, the publisher was bought by the Canadian company Harlequin Enterprises, its North American distributor based in Toronto, with whom it had a long informal partnership. The two companies offer a number of imprints that between them account for almost three-quarters of the romance paperbacks published in Britain. Its print books are presently out-numbered and out-sold by the company's e-books, which allowed the publisher to double its output.

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Kensington Books USA book publishing company

Kensington Publishing Corp. is an American, New York-based publishing house founded in 1974 by Walter Zacharius (1923–2011) and Roberta Bender Grossman (1946–1992). Kensington is known as “America’s Independent Publisher.” It remains a multi-generational family business, with Steven Zacharius succeeding his father as president and CEO, and Adam Zacharius as general manager.

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Lancer Books was a publisher of paperback books founded by Irwin Stein and Walter Zacharius that operated from 1961 through 1973. While it published stories of a number of genres, it was noted most for its science fiction and fantasy, particularly its series of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales, the first publication of many in paperback format. It published the controversial novel Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, and Ted Mark's ribald series The Man from O.R.G.Y. Lancer paperbacks had a distinctive appearance, many bearing mauve or green page edging.

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Roberta Helmer, under her pseudonym Christina Skye, was the best-selling American author of more than thirty-two novels in a variety of genres: romantic suspense, paranormal romance, as well as contemporary and historical romances. Many of her books have appeared on the USAToday and New York Times bestseller lists and the Publishers Weekly bestseller list. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Under her own name Helmer has written five non-fiction books about the classical Chinese puppet theater and traditional Chinese folk arts.

Jackie Kessler is the American author of the Hell on Earth urban fantasy paranormal romance series published by Kensington/Zebra. To date, the books include Hell's Belles, The Road to Hell and Hotter Than Hell, as well as a tie-in novella in the anthology, Eternal Lover. She has had numerous short stories published in various magazines, including Realms of Fantasy and Farthing. In 2009, Kessler published the superhero novel Black and White with co-author Caitlin Kittredge. The sequel, Shades of Gray, was released in 2010.

Double Dragon Publishing is a Canadian-based publisher specializing in e-book format publication. Founded by Deron Douglas in 2000, the company claims the largest collection of titles in the science fiction and fantasy categories currently in print, with annual sales of over 45,000 units.

Cheryl Bolen is an American author, educator and journalist. She is known for writing more than 30 historical romance and romantic suspense novels, many of them set among Regency aristocrats in early 19th century England.

Rebecca Zanetti

Rebecca Zanetti is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of paranormal romance, contemporary romance, and romantic suspense.

Roberta Grossman was an American publisher. She was born in Brooklyn, New York City and died March 13, 1992 at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She was founder and managing director of a number of book publishing companies, including Kensington Books and its imprint Zebra Books.

Ruby Jean Jensen was an American author of pulp horror fiction. A "constant presence in Zebra's catalogue", she specialized in the "creepy child" or "child in supernatural peril" trope.

References

  1. "Kensington Publishing Corp" . Retrieved 29 June 2012.
  2. 1 2 Grimes, William (7 March 2011). "Walter Zacharius, Romance Publisher, Dies at 87". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 3 Feb 2018..
  3. "Roberta Grossman, 46, Head of Zebra Books". New York Times. March 23, 1992. Retrieved 29 June 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Hendrix, Grady (2017). Paperbacks from Hell. Philadelphia: Quirk Books. p. 184. ISBN   9781594749810.
  5. "Kensington Publishing Corp" . Retrieved 3 Feb 2018.
  6. "Zebra Regencies". Archived from the original on 2 June 2012. Retrieved 29 June 2012.
  7. "Meredith Bond".