Kensington Books

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Kensington Publishing Corp. is the largest publisher in the United States that is not considered one of the six "major publishers." As the major publishers, Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, Little, Brown and Company (a division of Warner Books) and St. Martin's Press are all now parts of larger corporations, Kensington has become the largest publishing house to remain independent.

Kensington was founded in 1974 by Walter Zacharius. Steven Zacharius became President and Chief Executive Officer in 2005.

While Kensington is often maligned as a "me too" publisher that produces copycat books based on already popular trends and as a publisher that produces few books of literary merit, the company is known as a shrewd marketer and has become a major player in romance fiction as well as gay and lesbian fiction, erotica, and popular African American literature.

Imprints include Citadel, Pinnacle, Zebra (romance), Dafina (African American), Brava (erotic romance) and Aphrodisia (erotica). Noted authors include romance specialists Bertice Small and Heather Graham. Kensington is also known as the publisher that offered a contract to best-selling author Janet Dailey after her well-publicized plagiarism of Nora Roberts. In 2006, Kensington published several books from authors previously best-known for their work on the internet, including I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox, and My Tank is Fight! by Zack Parsons, a writer for Something Awful.