The books were only sold in schools, rather than traditional bookstores, and were written with input from the teachers around the state with backgrounds in math, science, social studies and reading.
Orange Frazer developed four study guides for the Ohio Graduation Tests, tests that every high school student in Ohio must take to graduate. In total, the company has published over 300 commercial and custom titles. Thus far, the company has created over 100 books in this way. In 2010, ten of the company's 13 releases were custom publications, meaning that the books were privately commissioned and then produced with assistance from Orange Frazer in marketing methods, content production, distribution, etc. First printings range in size from 250 up to 30,000 copies, with commercial projects averaging 3,000 to 5,000. Orange Frazer's subjects generally focus on Ohio, though they have also published works outside of this local scope.
The company specializes in two niches: regional nonfiction and custom publishing. Today, Orange Frazer Press is Ohio's largest independent book publisher. The Hayes book sold over 25,000 copies, while each of the subsequent biographies sold 20,000 or more. Subsequent works included Woody's Boys: 20 Famous Buckeyes Talk Amongst Themselves, a 1995 book about Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, as well as biographies of Ohio sports figures Johnny Bench, Chad Johnson, and Joe Nuxhall. The pair sold the books on their own to independent bookstores, and eventually it went through four printings. They founded Orange Frazer in order to use the 48 file drawers' worth of information they had, and eventually did so with Ohio Matters of Fact, the company's first published work. John Baskin and Marcy Hawley both worked at Ohio Magazine in the 1980s, where they accumulated a wealth of minutiae about the Buckeye State.