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 Women's fiction is an umbrella term for women-centered books that focus on women's life experience that are marketed to female readers, and includes many mainstream novels or women's rights books. It is distinct from Women's writing in English, wo ...

, romantic suspense and bestselling historical, paranormal and contemporary romance. In the past, it was also an iconic publisher of

pulp Pulp may refer to: * Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit * Pulp (band), an English rock band Engineering * Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper * Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture ...

horror, and it also published

western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

s and humor.

History

Zebra Books was launched in 1975 by Walter Zacharius, who had founded Kensington Publishing the previous year, and Roberta Bender Grossman.. 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.

Romance publishers

Zebra was built mostly on the

historical romance Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Lord Byron, Byron helped popularize in the early 19th century. The genre often takes the form of the novel. Varieties ...

genre. It later expanded the romance genre to embrace

paranormal romance Paranormal romance is a subgenre of both romantic fiction and speculative fiction. Paranormal romance focuses on romantic love and includes elements beyond the range of scientific explanation, from the speculative fiction genres of fantasy, scien ...

, 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. Best-selling authors on the Zebra list include Fern Michaels, Lisa Jackson,

Hannah Howell Hannah Dustin Howell (born 1950 in Massachusetts) is an American author of over 40 historical romance novels, many of which are set in medieval Scotland. She also writes under the names Sarah Dustin, Sandra Dustin, and Anna Jennet. Biography ...

, Janet Dailey, Victoria Alexander, Mary Jo Putney, and Alexandra Ivy.

Zebra Regency Romance

Zebra Books began publishing traditional

Regency romance Regency romances are a subgenre of romance novels set during the period of the British Regency (1811–1820) or early 19th century. Rather than simply being versions of contemporary romance stories transported to a historical setting, Regency r ...

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. Authors who wrote for the Zebra Regency romance line included Kathleen Baldwin, Meredith Bond, 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.

Skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of most animals. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is a rigid outer shell that holds up an organism's shape; the endoskeleton, a rigid internal fra ...

s were such a recurrent theme in Zebra's covers that the imprint is nicknamed "the skeleton farm" among collectors. Mainstay authors in Zebra's horror roster were Johnstone, Rick Hautala, and Ruby Jean Jensen. Other horror authors published were

Bentley Little Bentley Little (born 1960 in Mesa, Arizona) is an American author of horror fiction. Publishing an average of a novel a year since 1990, Little avoids publicity and rarely does promotional work or interviews for his writing. Early life Little is ...

, Ken Greenhall, Joe R. Lansdale and William M. Carney. 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.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zebra Books Book publishing company imprints Romance book publishing companies Book publishing companies based in New York (state)