Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

From A to Zebra

If Zebra Books had a mascot, it would be a slipper-clad skeleton sitting atop a crescent moon against the infinite void of space (hello, Sandman!). Founded in 1974 by Walter Zacharius and Roberta Grossman, two refugees from paperback house Lancer (whose titles include Male Nymphomaniac and The Man from O.R.G.Y.), Zebra was the flagship paperback imprint of Kensington Publishing, the independent press Zacharius launched with $67,000.

Grossman was twenty-nine, then the youngest president of a publishing house, and she and Zacharius had no pretensions. Without deep pockets, they had to be smarter and faster. When other publishers went high, Zebra went low. They paid lower royalties (sometimes a mere 2 percent) and smaller advances (as little as $500), and they paid late. They kept a small staff (twenty-two people), but hired smart. Zebra’s door was open to talent from other publishers who’d been passed over for promotions or forced to retire. Lacking deep ties to the literary community, Grossman and Zacharius plunged into the slush pile and emerged with titles they thought no one would touch: historical romances. By the early ’80s they had built Zebra, and Kensington, into a powerhouse with $10 million in sales annually.

Romance may have built the house of Zebra in the ’70s (continuing even into the ’90s with loud-sounding gothic romances like The Shrieking Shadows of Penporth Island and The Wailing Winds of Juneau Abbey), but in the ’80s horror made Zebra famous. Its first hit horror author was William W. Johnstone, whose preacher-driven novel The Devil’s Kiss put the press on the map in 1980. Rick Hautala became a Zebra mainstay, as did that Arkansas granny Ruby Jean Jensen, who never saw a baby that didn’t scare the pants off her. Zebra was hungry for product and became the publisher of last resort for authors like Bentley Little, Ken Greenhall, and Joe R. Lansdale when they couldn’t sell a book anywhere else.

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Zebra’s publishers knew their authors weren’t famous enough to sell books on name alone, so they focused instead on covers. They paid their artists well, hiring big names like Lisa Falkenstern and William Teason. Working on the skeleton farm may not have made you proud, but it did earn a paycheck. Always looking for ways to stand out, Zebra published the first hologram cover on a paperback horror novel (Rick Hautala’s Night Stone) in 1986.

In 1992 cancer claimed the life of Grossman, who had been like a daughter to Zacharius. After her death, Harlequin tried to buy Zebra for the bargain-basement price of $30 million; in the depths of his grief, Zacharius agreed to sell. He backed out at the last minute.

The early ’90s saw Zebra flogging the killer-child, Satanic, and animal-attack books that had been so popular in the ’70s, giving them increasingly ornate covers. But the death rattle had sounded: in 1993 Zebra reduced its horror output to two titles per month. Three years later one of the last and largest existing horror imprints in America stopped publishing horror titles and focused on romance and suspense instead. An era had ended.