This chapter traces the rise of secular, non-governmental publishing in Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that a succession of risk-taking entrepreneurs eventually made it possible for authors to become remunerated professionals and to become the entertainers, tribunes, and conscience of the nation. Despite the obstacles of government interference, undercapitalisation, and mass illiteracy, publishers underwent a series of transformations, from printer-artisans to merchant-booksellers to, by the 1840s, intellectuals, becoming a force for shaping imaginative literature, primarily through the medium of the thick journal. Only by the end of this period did they become major print capitalists, but even then, the publisher often remained a creaky mechanism for producing literature, with poorly fitting parts and thin financial lubrication. The influence of these publishers and their enterprises, however, is demonstrated by the fact that the new Soviet regime made closing them down one of its first tasks.