Publishers from 31 independent presses talk about how they came to publishing and why they stayed (or left), the mistakes they made, thier 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 a directory, "Publishing Lives" presents these publishers as the spiritual heirs of the great ninteenth-century founders of the New York houses. It provides a picture of nonacademic intellectual and literary life in North America at the end of the twentieth century.
