The history of Kensington Publishing follows the arc of the rise and fall of mass market paperbacks. The still-independent publisher, founded in New York City by Walter Zacharius and his partner, Roberta Grossman, released its first mass market paperback, Satan’s Daughters by Othello Peters, in 1975 under the Zebra Books imprint. Mass market was long the format of choice for the company, although such titles now compose only a small portion of its list.

Half a century later, CEO Steve Zacharius and other Kensington executives find themselves unafraid to experiment—just like the publisher’s founders. Zacharius acknowledges that Walter, his father, looked at Harlequin as something of a model, and in that vein established four book clubs that proved an important source of income. When Amazon came along, Zacharius says, “that business dried up.” In the mid-2000s, the elder Zacharius, who died in 2011, wanted to move the company into filmmaking; thus, Kensington Media was formed, with grandson Adam Zacharius placed in charge. But after producing just one film, the division was closed.

The point in relating these stories, Zacharius says, is that Kensington is open to trying new ideas. And unlike corporate publishers, he adds, it has the flexibility to move quickly when opportunities present themselves—and move on when a program has run its course.

The newest initiative that is paying off for the house is what Jackie Dinas, Kensington’s publisher, calls its hybrid authors program. While Kensington has published independent authors in the past, she says, it now has a more formal structure “to work with authors who want to have a level of control over their creative output, but want to have the infrastructure and support that a traditional publisher can provide.”

Dinas describes the program, which currently focuses exclusively on romance, as a boutique business, but adds that Kensington is expanding into horror and suspense. “We want to focus on authors who want a long career,” she says.

Zacharius says the rollout is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened at Kensington—and not just because it gave a 45% boost to print sales in 2024, with sales continuing to grow this year.

At present, Kensington has about 80 employees, with nearly half having been with the publisher for at least 10 years. Zacharius acknowledges that there are pros and cons to working at an independent publisher but believes “the pluses outweigh the minuses.” He notes that, while Kensington doesn’t have the deep pockets of the Big Five, the only person the company laid off during the pandemic was its receptionist, and only because its Manhattan offices were locked down.

Dinas, who was promoted to publisher three years ago after serving as subsidiary rights director, attributes the company’s retention rate to its emphasis on giving its employees a broad license to work on projects that excite them. That creative freedom enabled Kensington to become one of the first major publishers to establish an imprint dedicated to publishing books for a Black audience when it formed Arabesque in 1994; the company sold the imprint to BET in 1998, but returned to the market for good in 2000 with its Dafina imprint.

The ability to move quickly also helped Kensington become one of the first houses in the U.S. to create deluxe covers for some of its titles. That production process takes place in China—though the press’s other titles are printed stateside—and is overseen directly by Zacharius.

Editor-in-chief John Scognamiglio arrived at Kensington in 1992—a few months before even Zacharius, he notes—after working at Pocket Books, and he says the freedom he and all Kensington employees have in getting involved in different areas of the business helped keep him around. “You’re not stuck in lanes here,” he explains.

Scognamiglio particularly enjoys the leeway the press gives him in working with his authors, with whom, he says, he has a very collaborative relationship. He will often move an author he likes from writing in one genre to another—something that is much more difficult to do at a big publisher.

Nowhere is Kensington’s flexibility more evident than in its effort to shift its focus toward hardcovers and trade paperbacks. For years, Kensington was the nation’s largest independent publisher of mass market paperbacks, often placing more titles on PW’s mass market bestseller list than all but a few corporate publishers. But in 2020, Dinas says, it became clear that readers and retailers were losing interest in the format.

That led Kensington to put together a team to develop a five-year plan to transition away from mass market. As recently as 2015, the format made up 66% of Kensington’s list, a portion that gradually fell to 20% this year. In 2026, mass market will represent just 8% of its list, with the lion’s share in the cozy mystery category, Dinas says.

Zacharius and Lynn Cully, formerly publisher at Kensington and now VP and director of business relations, both note that the press also has a long history of publishing hardcovers. Its first two—Duke of Flatbush by Duke Snider and On the Outside Looking In by Michael Reagan—were released in late 1988, followed by Jim Brown’s Out of Bounds in early 1989. All became bestsellers.

As part of the transition away from mass market, Kensington has been moving many of the format’s stars to hardcover and trade paperback. A prime example is Fern Michaels, Kensington’s all-time top-selling author, whose books have sold about 42 million copies and whose career was built in the mass market. Her long-running, bestselling Sisterhood series has, to date, been exclusively published as mass market originals, starting with 2004’s Weekend Warriors. That changes with the 37th installment, Code Blue, which will be published in December as a trade paperback original.

Lisa Jackson, another longtime Kensington author, has released more than 140 romances with the company, most of which were mass market paperbacks. Her just-published It Happened on the Lake is a lead hardcover for the publisher this summer.

While Zacharius is proud of Kensington’s romance roots, the company has steadily expanded to publish in all commercial fiction categories. This year, romance will account for 24% of the Kensington list, down from 60% in 2015. Rounding out Kensington’s 2025 list of 300 titles are a number of books in the suspense and thriller, historical fiction, mystery, and science fiction and fantasy categories. Kensington entered the SFF market in a major way with the 2022 acquisition of Erewhon Books, and it had made other purchases along the way, including buying Pinnacle in 1987, Citadel in 2000, and Lyrical Press in 2014.

Zacharius’s intention is to keep the company private and family run, with Adam, now VP and general manager, currently being groomed for succession. That plan seems just fine with Kensington employees and authors. “The family environment,” Dinas says, “works for me.”