[1] Zebra Books was launched in 1975 by Walter Zacharius, who had founded Kensington Publishing the previous year, and Roberta Bender Grossman.

By keeping a low budget, small staff, and hiring overlooked if not desperate authors, they built Zebra into a powerhouse of cheap, consumable literature, with $10 million in sales annually by the early 1980s.

Beating the bushes for overlooked writers and eager first-timers willing to start out cheap, the partners developed the careers of prolific and profit-generating authors like Janelle Taylor and Katherine Stone.

[2] Best-selling authors on the Zebra list include Fern Michaels, Lisa Jackson, Hannah Howell, Janet Dailey, Victoria Alexander, Mary Jo Putney, and Alexandra Ivy.

[6] Authors who wrote for the Zebra Regency romance line included Kathleen Baldwin, Meredith Bond,[7] Shannon Donnelly, and Debbie Raleigh.