Kensington Publishing

(Novels, Thrillers, Mysteries, Non-fiction, Bio)
kensingtonbooks.com
info@kensingtonbooks.com
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About Kensington Publishing

Kensington Publishing is an independent, family-owned book publisher founded in 1974 and based in New York City. Kensington is renowned for the diversity of the authors and books it publishes.

Kensington publishes popular fiction & non-fiction, including most genres. Despite being family-owned, Kensington is the foremost independent commercial publishing house in the United States, publishing over 500 fiction and non-fiction titles each year. It’s home to New York Times bestselling authors, including Fern Michaels, Lisa Jackson, Joanne Fluke, William W. Johnstone, and others.

Kensington Submissions

No agent required. Debut authors welcome.

Kensington publishes all of popular genres such as thrillers, romance, historical fiction, cozy mysteries, and non-fiction, as well as true-crime, western, sci-fi, and speculative fiction titles. They are currently not accepting Children’s, Middle Grade, Young Adult or Poetry submissions.

SUBMIT TO ONE EDITOR ONLY VIA EMAIL. From the list of editors and their areas of interest below, determine which editor would be best suited to or most interested in the type of book you are proposing. Address the submission to that editor’s attention. If an editor passes, it’s a pass for Kensington; do not re-query or re-submit to another editor.

Editorial Staff

John Scognamiglio (Editor-in-Chief) – John is on the lookout for fiction: historical romance, contemporary romance, women’s contemporary fiction, Amish romances and inspirational romances, historical fiction, gay fiction, cozy and historical mysteries, dark suspense and thrillers. Word count for mysteries is 75,000-100,000 words. jscognamiglio@kensingtonbooks.com

Wendy McCurdy (Editorial Director) – Wendy is looking for historical fiction and non-fiction, with the non-fiction focused on military, wartime history. Also open to mainstream women’s fiction including southern fiction, beach reads, sagas, commercial literary fiction, romance, rom-com fare, etc. Please include the first chapter as an attachment. wmccurdy@kensingtonbooks.com

Alex Sunshine (Senior Editor) – Alex is looking for fiction: swoon-worthy romance of all kinds, particularly romantasy and romantic suspense, as well as domestic suspense and clever, surprising and discussable women’s fiction. asunshine@kensingtonbooks.com

Elizabeth May (Editor) – Elizabeth is looking for familiar stories told in new ways, especially projects from diverse and historically underrepresented voices. Fiction: Historical fiction, particularly untold women’s stories in history, and 20th century conflicts. Romantasy, and magical crossover. Rom-com, or women’s fiction crossover. Upmarket mysteries, with broader fiction appeal. Non-fiction: New age/spiritual, “occult,” micro-histories, hidden histories, stranger-than-fiction non-fiction, social commentary, pop culture, prescriptive, and true crime. emay@kensingtonbooks.com

James Abbate (Editor) – James edits non-fiction only: biography, memoir, history, true crime, Mafia, pop culture, pop science, film/TV, music, military history, with a particular emphasis on WWII, Holocaust, and Cold War non-fiction. jabbate@kensingtonbooks.com

Elizabeth Trout (Editor) – Elizabeth is looking for fiction: voice-driven women’s fiction with romance crossover, historical fiction set in under-explored time periods or settings, gothic fiction, mysteries that are not fully cozy but not procedural (in the style of Knives Out), and general fiction with a speculative or magical realism tilt but grounded in our world. etrout@kensingtonbooks.com

Kensington titles

– One Last Rainy Day by Kate Stewart– After the Ocean by Lauren E. Rico
– Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin
– The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
– The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman

More titles

– The Determined by Rachel Rueckert
– Run on Red: Deluxe Stenciled Edges
– A Crown of Stars by Shana Abe
– Where the False Gods Dwell by Denny S. Bryce
– The Curse of Hester Gardens\

Leaving Woodstock by Jacqueline Ryan (Fiction/Debut) – A Southern coming-of-age novel featuring a gritty teenage heroine traveling with her late mama’s ghost on a journey to find her father and discover her true self, which takes her from Woodstock, Georgia, to Woodstock, New York, in the summer of 1969.

Casanova LLC by Julia Whelan (Fiction) – Originally released in audio via Audiobrary, set over a transformative weekend at a lush Venetian palazzo, pitched as Under the Tuscan Sun for the Lucy Score reader.

Spinsters by Krista Webster (Fiction/Debut) – Mad Men meets Sex and the City and inspired by true events and real female trailblazers who shaped modern PR from the 1960s through the 1980s, in which four women responsible for spinning stories that captured the zeitgeist of an era defy convention and combat sexism, racism, and ageism in a patriarchal world.

A Prologue to Murder by V. M. Burns (Fiction) – The 12th book in the Mystery Bookshop series, in which two characters finally tie the knot but a mysterious stranger is found murdered at the wedding reception.

Restraint by Amanda Skenadore (Fiction) – A woman seizes upon the nation’s first bestselling diet book to rally her community behind the nation’s food conservation effort in the First World War—only to spark a wave of suspicion and surveillance that endangers her own family.

Letter from President and CEO

“As Kensington Publishing continues into our fifth decade as an independent publisher, we, like the entire industry, have gone through tremendous changes since our founding by my father, Walter Zacharius, who unfortunately passed away in March, 2011.

Kensington remains the largest independent firm to publish in the paperback field. We started as a historical romance publisher in 1974 with an investment of $67,000. Since then we have grown in the number of people we employ, the number of books we publish, and the range of genres that our titles represent. Even as we continue to grow and evolve, we remain a family business. My son, Adam Zacharius, who had worked for us on the West Coast, moved to the New York office shortly after my father passed away and sits behind the desk my father used for his 35-plus years in the office. I believe we are the only third generation publishing company in the business. Fortunately I have four grandchildren; so hopefully the trend will continue.

Some people ask why an author would choose to be published at Kensington instead of one of the larger companies. The answer is that although this is becoming a much more technologically based industry, we are still a “people” company. There isn’t another company where every author has the opportunity to meet and deal with everyone in the firm, including the top management team. We treat every writer as a part of our family. That’s easy to claim, but ask any of our authors how they feel about us.

There’s something special and unique about being a family-owned business. It’s hard to put into words, but if you were to ask authors or employees, they could probably explain it better than I could.

I thank you for supporting our company, and I want you to know that I enjoy answering all of my email from readers and writers. I truly answer every email that I receive whether it be praise, criticism, or just general correspondence. Although I enjoy reading and answering all correspondence, any conversations or proposals for submitting a manuscript should be sent to an editor.”

Steven Zacharius
Chairman, President & CEO
SZacharius@kensingtonbooks.com

Come check out these Kensington titles.