Tony Dierckins started X-communication in 1994. As an editor at Pfeifer-Hamilton, the original publisher of Old Turtle, he worked on The Duct Tape Book with author Tim Nyberg, resulting in the two of them forming Bad Dog Press, which published a handful of humor books including Rubber Chickens for the Soul. X-communication helps individuals and organizations self-publish and occasionally publishes books that focus on the Western Lake Superior region, in particular the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.

Zenith Press is the military history imprint of MBI Publishing. MBI started as Classic Motorbooks, a book retail business run out of the Minneapolis garage of founder Thomas Warth in 1965. In 1973, Motorbooks began to publish its own auto-related books. Motorbooks International was created in the mid-1970s as a wholesale distributor of automotive and aviation books. Zenith Press was created in 2004 with the hiring of publisher Richard Kane, formerly of Presidio Press. Along with the new imprint came a new focus on narrative military histories, while maintaining the MBI tradition of illustrated books about military vehicles and weapons.