says Zacharius invested more in cover art than in the books themselves, “believing that it was the cover that sold a book, not the quality of the writing inside.” They were famous for their holographic covers, which debuted on Rick Hautala’s Night Stone, and were used on many William Johnstone and Ruby Jean Jensen books as well. They were more open to books that were rejected by other houses largely due to the fact that their advances were on the low end of the scale.

As a general rule, they considered manuscripts that had been rejected by other publishing houses, tapping into a lucrative romance market that was not yet fully appreciated by other houses (Dinger). With Roberta Grossman as President (the New York Times says at 29 years old she was “the youngest president of a paperback house”) Zebra grew. By the mid-1980s, Zebra had risen from a small, independent publishing house in New York to the 10th ranked publisher in the mass-market space, generating $40 million in sales annually (Dinger, ). After Lancer went bankrupt in 1973, Zacharius invested in Kensington Publishing for the princely sum of $67,000 ( Kensington), and soon purchased Zebra Books from a small company, Grove Press. Howard in affordable paperback editions with now-classic covers by Frank Frazetta. He later became the owner/publisher of Lancer Books, which resurrected the works of Robert E. This led to jobs at McFadden Publishing, Popular Library, and Ace News, where he invented what many SF and Western fans know as the Ace Double. Army from 1942 to 1945, Zacharius went to New York University on the GI Bill and took classes aimed at helping him achieve his goal of becoming a New York publisher. The story of Zebra Books as a company is really the story of World War II vet Walter Zacharius. I wasn’t able to find out exactly how many Zebra horror titles were published monthly during the height of the horror boom, but their output rivaled some of the largest publishers of their time. Zebra Books stepped into the horror publishing arena in the late 1970s, then really leaned into it in the 1980s.

It’s difficult to comprehend that quite so many years have gone by since those halcyon days of horror. Fact of the matter is, I’ve gotten older. It’s strange to call Zebra paperbacks “vintage,” but I guess that’s what they are by the 25-year rule. Every vintage paperback horror fan knows Zebra Books.

The Unholy Smile by Gregory A. Douglas