In Publishing Lives, publishers from 31 independent presses talk about how they came to publishing and why they stayed ( or didn’t), the mistakes they made, their relationships with authors, the problems of growth, definitions of success, why they do or do not seek grants, their relationships with distributors, bookstores, New York and Toronto, and each other. More than just a directory, Publishing Lives presents these publishers as the spiritual heirs of the nineteenth-century founders of the great New York houses.