Among the many contributors to Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of American Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century, published last fall by Two Trees Press and distributed by Ingram Content Group, is Steve Zacharius, president and CEO of Kensington Publishing. Here we reproduce his contribution, which focuses on how Kensington grew and the old mass market side of the book industry.
My grandparents, like most people back then, didn't even know what being a publisher meant. But my father, Walter Zacharius, wanted to own a newspaper. He got his start in sales for Macfadden, publisher of magazines including True Confessions, and then for Ace Books.
As a young teen, I worked two summers in the mailroom of Lancer Books, which Walter started with partner Irwin Stein in 1961. They published paperback mass market titles, including Mario Puzo's pre-Godfather novel The Fortunate Pilgrim, and the '60s classic Candy by Terry Southern, a bawdy romp about a wide-eyed hippie girl that was initially banned from stores and libraries. Other titles include Conan the Barbarian in early Manga and the very successful The Man From O.R.G.Y., a sexy takeoff on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. There must have been ten books in that series by Ted Marx, and each one had a print run of about a million copies. I was impressed when my father published the first U.S. book on the Beatles, with a photo insert, but more so that he did men's magazines like Swank and Gallery. He used to think his night table was a good place to hide them from me.
Walter was quite the storyteller. He knew every one of the 800 or so wholesalers at that time, their spouses and their kids' names. He was the consummate salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember him telling me how tough some of the wholesalers were. When he worked for Macfadden, he was sent out to collect money and had a gun pointed at him on a table. My dad was a scrawny six-foot Jewish kid from Brooklyn but he had no fear. He took the gun and spun it around so it was facing the wholesaler and said, "Now we can talk."
Walter was the ultimate marketeer. Lancer didn't offer big author advances, but he spent money on cover artwork by Frank Frazetta and other well-known artists as well as on clever marketing campaigns. In 1973, the public company filed for bankruptcy after a four-year lawsuit with his distributor, and in 1974 he started Zebra. The following year he formed Kensington Publishing Corporation with his friend, the editor Roberta Bender Grossman. She became president and publisher at a time when few women held that title, and held shares in the company. Kensington's mission was to publish historical romances because its competitor Harlequin was then publishing only contemporary romances.
Walter kept commissioning cover art to make books by first-time authors stand out on the racks. The Italian illustrators Pino Daeni and Franco Accornero received $6,000 per painting for one-time use on the cover, but their work really made the books pop. (Those paintings by Pino now sell for $35,000.) Mass market was in its prime and books by first-time authors were published in hundreds of thousands of copies per title. Walter's motto was "Cash is king," and the company had to keep putting out new books and bigger distributions to increase the gross while returns would come back. He had no fear of the giant publishing companies and always wanted to outsmart them at a fraction of the cost. When Bantam was publishing Lee Iacocca's autobiography, Walter happened to find a previously published biography of Iacocca and released it at the same time as Bantam's blockbuster. They both hit the New York Times list, but Kensington's had probably only cost about $2,500 for the manuscript.
Covers remained the chief marketing tool. Zebra Books, the primary imprint, was the first company to use a hologram on a cover, for a horror title by Rick Hautala called Moondeath. Of course, sales went through the roof. Zebra later created a series of romances called Lovegrams, all featuring a hologram, and covers made from a lenticular plastic lens for a three-dimensional moving image effect. No one realized at the time that these covers could not be stripped for returns, which was the normal process to get credit for returned books. However, the book went on to have a huge sell-through.
In the mid-1970s, I began working at Jules Kroll Associates, the world's leading investigator of white-collar crime, looking for payoffs to purchasing agents who bought printing. It was legal research as I planned to return to law school, but once I started making money, that idea went out the window. I learned about the printing business and took classes in manufacturing. At 25, I became director of manufacturing at Rolling Stone magazine when it moved from San Francisco to New York City. I was the youngest person on the business side, and it was exciting to work with so many writers who became big-time journalists. After a few years, I left to start my own promotional printing company for all of the big book publishers.
In 1992, Kensington, publisher of Zebra Books and Pinnacle Books, was still largely a mass market house, but my dad was looking for an exit strategy. Sadly, Roberta passed away from cancer right when he began negotiations with potential buyers for the company. He asked me to join him in these meetings. He had considered Roberta, who was much younger than him, almost like a daughter, and was in great emotional distress about her death. After protracted negotiations, both parties walked away from the table. My father said, "Steve, I'm not getting any younger. Do you want to come join me?"
In 1993, I sold my printing company to a friend and started at Kensington as vice president and general manager. Now my son Adam Zacharius holds those titles, and I am president and CEO.