Kensington Publishing Corporation

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Kensington Publishing Corporation

850 3rd Avenue
New York, New York 10022
U.S.A.
Telephone: (212) 407-1500
Toll Free: (877) 422-3665
Fax: (212) 935-0699
Web site: http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

Private Company
Incorporated: 1975
Employees: 83
Sales: $47.2 million (2005 est.)
NAIC: 511130 Book Publishers

Based in New York City, Kensington Publishing Corporation is among the last independent companies in the United States to publish hardcover, trade paperback, and mass-market paperback fiction and nonfiction books. Through its eight imprints, Kensington releases some 600 books a year, and boasts a backlist catalog of more than 3,000 titles. Romance and women's fiction, the original focus of the company, remains important, but over the years Kensington has branched into a number of other genres and subject areas. The company's flagship imprint is Zebra Books, which publishes the bulk of the company's mass-market romance novels, both historical and contemporary. In addition, Zebra publishes westerns, horror, and humorous titles. The Kensington Books imprint is reserved for hardcover and trade paperback books in such genres and subjects as mystery, alternative health, and self-help, as well as romance. Pinnacle Books focuses on commercial fiction and true crime. The Citadel imprint publishes nonfiction books, including biography, history, military history, and self-help. The Dafina line is dedicated to African American fiction and nonfiction as well as young adult titles, as is the Urban Soul imprint. The Brava imprint is devoted to erotic romance, while the newest imprint, Aphrodisia, publishes erotica. In addition, Kensington operates the Rebel Base Books web site, offering edgy popular culture books skewed toward a young male audience. Kensington is led by chief executive and chairman Steven Zacharius, the son of the company's cofounder and chairman emeritus, Walter Zacharius.

COFOUNDER LAUNCHES PUBLISHING CAREER AFTER WORLD WAR II

Walter Zacharius was born in New York City in 1923 and by the time he was 14 decided he wanted to become a publisher. Yet military service intervened and from 1942 to 1945 he served in the U.S. Army, participating in both the Mediterranean and European theaters of the war. After his discharge from the service he began to take college classes on the GI Bill, accumulating more than 200 credit hours from New York University and several other schools without earning a degree or even picking a major, all the while pursuing his dream of a publishing career in New York. In 1947 he went to work in the circulation department at McFadden Publishing, becoming involved in magazine and paperback book publishing at a time when paperbacks were sold at newsstands along with magazines. A year later he moved to Popular Library Book, Inc., for a two-year stint, followed by another two years at American Mercury, Inc., continuing his work in circulation. This led to his elevation to circulation director at Ace News Company from 1951 to 1961. It was here that he displayed a talent for innovation, creating the Ace Double Novel, which combined two genre novels—mysteries, westerns, or romances—printed in opposite directions with two different covers. Unfortunately, Zacharius also stamped the price on both the front and back covers and for a while some wholesalers returned unsold copies asking for credit on both amounts.

Zacharius became a owner-publisher in the 1960s with Lancer Book, Inc., publishing a wide range of inexpensive paperbacks, from reprints of "teenage classics" to bawdy tales such as Male Nymphomaniac, The Man from O.R.G.Y., and Teenybopper in the C.I.A. When Lancer began to struggle, Zacharius became involved in what he called "sophisticated men's magazines," publishing such titles as Swank and Gallery. As the field of men's magazines became more graphic with the emergence of the likes of Hustler, he left the business. Always on the lookout for a publishing opportunity, Zacharius, a New Yorker of Jewish heritage, would later found a magazine called Nashville Gospel, aimed at evangelical Christians in the South and Midwest.

Two years before the launch of Nashville Gospel, in 1975, Zacharius established Kensington Publishing with an investment of $67,000 to become involved in the publishing of mass market paperback romances. He bought Zebra Books from Grove Press (the avant-garde publisher best known for taking on the U.S. Post Office in its refusal to ship copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the D. H. Lawrence novel that the postmaster had deemed pornographic).

To run Zebra, Zacharius brought in 29-year-old Roberta Grossman as president, making her the youngest president of a paperback publishing house. Brooklyn-born, she too attended New York University. Initially they published a handful of historical romances and began to grow the business. "Every other publisher looked down on [romance] when we started in 1975," Zacharius told the New York Times in a 1998 profile. With little to offer in way of an advance, Zacharius and Grossman were willing to look at manuscripts rejected by every house in town and rummaged through stacks of unsolicited manuscripts, the so-called slush pile. While Zebra may have paid small advances and less-than-standard royalty rates, it did give a number of writers an opportunity to become published, and some of them went onto to build successful careers, signing lucrative deals.

Zebra romances were formulaic, as Grossman described to Crain's New York Business in 1986: "Heroines should be strong, appealing women: lovely, young, innocent, intelligent, independent, adventurous … and generally orphaned or separated from her family." Instead of literature, Zebra spent its money on covers, believing that it was the cover that sold a book, not the quality of the writing inside. Inspired by greeting cards, Zebra covers used foiling and embossing and in the mid-1980s began employing holograms. When selling the list to booksellers, Zebra did not offer manuscripts. Rather, the sales rep brought a mock-up of the cover. Another key element in Zebra's growth was Zacharius' lengthy experience in circulation, which he put to good use in developing a wholesale and retail network to get Zebra titles into the marketplace and ultimately the hands of their female readers.

Zebra focused on its romance niche—although it also dabbled in a line of action-adventure books aimed at men—and took advantage of a switch in readers' interests from the contemporary Harlequin serial romance to the kind of single title, historical romance that Zebra had to offer. The romance field, once eschewed by many publishers, was now embraced, leading to a boom in the field and a shakeout in the early 1980s. Zebra's dedication to its niche paid off, so in 1984 Zebra found itself ranked 10th among mass-market publishers, and was one of the fastest growing.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

Kensington Publishing Corp. is the last remaining independent U.S. publisher of hardcover, trade, and mass market paperback books.

PINNACLE BOOKS ACQUIRED: 1988

Kensington expanded beyond the Zebra imprint and the romance genre in 1988 when it acquired Pinnacle Books. Grossman assumed the presidency of the new unit as well. She published hardcover commercial fiction as well as general nonfiction. However, Grossman's health was failing, and in March 1992 she died of cancer at the age of 46. Zacharius, who said he viewed her as a daughter, was devastated. Harlequin quickly stepped in with an offer of more than $30 million to acquire Kensington, which at this stage was generating about $40 million in annual sales. Distraught, Zacharius agreed to sell the business to Harlequin before changing his mind, later telling the New York Times that Harlequin had "pushed too hard."

Aside from the last minute scuttling of the sale of the company to Harlequin, Kensington underwent a number of changes following Grossman's death. Zacharius' son, Steven, already a seasoned publishing executive, joined the company as vice president and general manager. He had previously worked for Rolling Stone as director of manufacturing, and for the previous decade had been running his own company, which printed promotional materials for major book publishers. Replacing Grossman as Zebra's publisher was author Ruth Harris, but she lasted only nine months before being replaced by the internal promotion of Lynn Harris.

The company was also reorganized, formally bringing all four imprints under the Kensington corporate umbrella: Zebra, Pinnacle, Kensington Hardcovers (replacing Zebra Hardcovers), and Z-Fare, a newly introduced line of juvenile books. Romance titles still accounted for nearly 60 percent of the company's revenues, but the new emphasis on the Kensington name was part of an effort to broaden the company's focus and reduce romance sales to around the 50 percent level. Pinnacle was more affected by the change in approach than the other imprints. Since its acquisition, Pinnacle had become increasingly like Zebra, both of them publishing similar romance titles. As Pinnacle sought to establish its own identity in the marketplace, true crime, celebrity biographies, humor and other nonfiction fare received greater emphasis. Moreover, Pinnacle's romances took a different approach than Zebra's, offering multi-cultural romances, primarily African American, and other kinds of alternative romances. Kensington also beefed up its book club operations, and dropped Simon & Schuster as its distributor in favor of Penguin, a move that made Kensington titles available in England, Australia, and New Zealand.

More changes followed in 1995 as Steven Zacharius became Kensington's president and chief operating officer, and the company continued to refocus its business to expand beyond romance publishing. In addition, a number of low-selling authors were trimmed from the roster to free up money to spend on more established writers with greater sales potential. The company also formed its own sales force that began selling Kensington titles in 1996. They would not have Z-Fare to represent, however. Despite winning some individual book awards, the young adult imprint did not gain traction and Kensington decided to exit the business. Another development during this period was a deal between Zebra and Wal-Mart to publish eight 160-page romances a month under the Precious Gem Romance label, to be sold exclusively in Wal-Mart stores. A separate line of hardcover romances would also be carried in Wal-Mart and by the Books-A-Million chain. Growing beyond romance, Kensington in 1996 also began publishing health and nutrition books, initial titles including Baby: An Owner's Manual, The American Yoga Wellness Book, and Straight from the Heart.

In the second half of the 1990s Kensington pursued other ways to market its books. In early 1998 it signed a deal to sell Zebra, Pinnacle, and Kensington titles on the QVC channel, which was launching the QVC Romance Book Club. Authors would make appearances on QVC and when viewers purchased a featured set of romances they became automatically enrolled in the new book club. Each month they received four discounted romances before they became available in the stores. Another Kensington author, nutritionist Gary Null, would take advantage of the QVC connection to make three appearances promoting The Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, selling about 6,000 books. Also in 1998 Kensington reached an agreement with the Mirror Newspaper Group to create a historical romance book club for the United Kingdom.

Kensington took advantage of its 25th anniversary in 2000 to launch a marketing campaign to promote Zebra, including commercials on the Lifetime cable network that used the tagline, "Zebra Books. The place to Find Romance." Hoping to take advantage of the push, Kensington introduced a new line of historical romances under the Ballad name. Another new romance line looking to benefit as well was the bilingual Encanto Romance line.

KEY DATES

1975:: The company is founded by Walter Zacharius and Roberta Grossman.
1986:: Pinnacle Books is acquired.
1992:: Grossman dies.
2000:: The Carol Publishing Group is acquired.
2005:: Walter Zacharius retires.

CAROL PUBLISHING ACQUIRED: 2000

While Kensington was well suited to growing its romance business internally, the company looked to acquisitions to further its objectives in other areas. In 2000 it paid $2.5 million to purchase Carol Publishing Group, whose assets were put on the block following a bankruptcy. In addition to 130 unpublished works, Kensington picked up a backlist of 1,500 titles, giving the company a toehold in such areas as gaming, parenting, philosophy, and New Age/occult. Although the company continued to look for acquisition opportunities in the $2 million to $10 million range, the company spurred growth in the early 2000s through new initiatives. In 2003 the Dafina imprint was established to publish contemporary romance novels for the African-American market.

Walter Zacharius, in the meantime, became a published author himself when, at the age of 80 and after 50 years in the publishing business, his first novel, Songbird, was published by Altria Books. It was inspired by a woman he met during World War II, whose tale he once told Roberta Grossman. She encouraged him to write the story as a novel, and essentially on a dare he began writing it in the 1980s. Told from the point of view of a young Polish-Jewish woman turned resistance fighter and spy, it was a sweeping novel about World War II and the Holocaust.

Zacharius stepped down as CEO and chairman of Kensington in 2005, turning over the posts to his son and giving his attention to the writing of a second novel. The younger Zacharius indicated that he was still interested in further acquisitions, citing the difficulty in achieving significant growth through internal means. For the next year the company continued to focus on organic growth, pursuing the new hot niches of erotic romances and erotica, leading to the creation of the Brava and Aphrodisia imprints. Kensington also established a new Dafina imprint called Drama High, aimed at the African American young-adult market. Even as Kensington branched out into a number of directions, however, romance fiction in various guises remained the company's true love.

Ed Dinger