Kensington Books 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 biggest publishing house that remains independent. Random House is a publishing division of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann based in New York City. ... Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. ... Jean-François Millet Le Semeur (The Sower) Simon & Schuster logo, circa 1961. ... Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. ... Headquartered in the legendary Flatiron Building in New York City, St. ...

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 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. A romance novel is a novel from the genre currently known as romance. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Erotic art. ... Heather Graham Pozzessere is an author, who writes primarily in the romance genre. ...