Robin Robertson Deputy publishing director, Jonathan Cape

The book that made my year: Many years ago, I was sitting in Blake's bar in Enniskillen with John McGahern and he recommended an American novel from the 60s, written by John Williams: a book called Stoner. I thought it was astonishing, and I passed it to vintage, who brought it out in 2003 with John's introduction. Like so many great books, it promptly disappeared, again – only to come back this year, miraculously, and succeed.

Our book that deserved to do better: Chamber Music by Tom Benn. It's the late 1990s, in the middle of the drug wars on the estates of Manchester, and complicated antihero Bane is pitched against a Yardie called Hagfish, whose weapon of choice is a Komodo dragon. Tom Benn – still only 26 – is writing these amazing dialogue-driven noir literary thrillers that, as the blurb says, "do for low-life Manchester what Trainspotting did for Leith", and no one is paying attention.

I wish I'd published: Cormac McCarthy, as usual. Even a screenplay by Cormac McCarthy, like The Counsellor (Picador).

Alexandra Pringle Editor-in-chief, Bloomsbury

The book that made my year: In a year that included fiction by George Saunders, Aminatta Forna, Colum McCann, Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Gilbert and Khaled Hosseini, how can I choose? But perhaps in the end it will be 21-year-old Samantha Shannon's debut The Bone Season, which hit the bestseller lists on three continents in its first week of publication – a pretty wonderful start for the first in a seven-book series.

Our book that deserved to do better: Mimi by Lucy Ellmann! Lucy Ellmann is a genius, and Mimi – funny, feisty, feminist, furious and fantastic – is her masterpiece. The reviews were great. But where were the prize shortlists?

I wish I'd published: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, of course.

Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

Lee Brackstone Creative director, Faber

The book that made my year: Publishers have short memories, so the most recent successes often burn most fiercely. Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop by Bob Stanley is the benign counterpoint to Julian Cope's satanic rock'n'roll bible of last year, Copendium. I can't think of another book that covers half acentury of music from the Shangri-Las and Del Shannon to Pet Shop Boys and Public Enemy with such informed passion and eloquence. Yeah Yeah Yeah is one of the few books I've edited that comes in at 800 pages where not a single word is wasted.

Our book that deserved to do better: Translated fiction remains difficult in this country, even though publishers are undoubtedly much less reticent about committing to novels in another language. I was dispirited by the lack of attention, and sales, for My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain by a young Argentine writer, Patricio Pron.

I wish I'd published: I was disappointed not to see Ben Marcus's terrifying modernist masterpiece, The Flame Alphabet (Granta), find the readers it deserves. The literary spawn of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard, everything by Marcus is worth reading. He's a fearless stylist for whom language means both everything and nothing. The Flame Alphabet stands head and shoulders above more vaunted contemporary American novels as a truly visionary piece of fiction.

Simon Prosser Publisher, Hamish Hamilton

The book that made my year: Zadie Smith's The Embassy of Cambodia. This long short story, published in the New Yorker, is one of the best things she has ever written, and shows how much can be done with the form. It's almost a tiny novel, in 21 parts. With over 40,000 copies in print it feels like another victory for the short story, following Lydia Davis's Man Booker International and Alice Munro's Nobel prizes.

Our book that deserved to do better: César Aira's three "novelitas" in a box didn't receive a single mainstream review, despite there being so much to say about this brilliant, playful, subversive Argentinian writer whose mantra is "the flight forwards" (never stop writing, never look back). He has been compared to Sebald, Bolaño and Marías –and if you love any of them you will probably love Aira. Try him!

I wish I'd published: Volumes 1 and 2 of Karl Ove Knausgård's epic novel/memoir My Struggle (Harvill Secker) blew me away: totally immersive, collapsing the wall between author and reader as you live his life alongside him. It's somehow triumphant and redemptive – and powerfully addictive – even as it recounts the most apparently mundane aspects of life. He's a genius.

Kate Atkinson. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex

Richard Beswick Publishing director, Little, Brown & Abacus

The book that made my year: There are two, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Mark Lewisohn's first volume of his Beatles trilogy. Both are utterly magnificent, compulsively readable and the fruits of amazing authorial dedication.

Our book that deserved to do better: Parinoush Saniee's The Book of Fate. It is a novel that tells the story of 50 years in Iran through the eyes of an indomitable heroine. Gripping and moving, it opens up a world to the reader in the manner of a 19th-century Russian novel. I couldn't understand why the British media did not pay it more attention, though luckily it has fared better overseas.

I wish I had published: Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, which was a funny and touching followup to The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The Italian poet and writer Gabriele D'Annunzio. Photograph: Mondadori via Getty Images

Sigrid Rausing Publisher, Granta & Portobello

The books that made my year: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton and AM Homes' May We Be Forgiven. Eleanor Catton won the Booker and AM Homes won the Women's prize for fiction; both books are extraordinary works of fiction, focusing on the aftermath of violence and how to narrate, and in a sense transcend, the story of crime and death.

Our book that deserved to do better: Colin McAdam's A Beautiful Truth, which won the Writers' Trust prize for fiction in Canada. It's a captivating novel about a childless couple in Vermont who adopt a chimp, and bring him up as a child. Every second chapter is set in a chimp sanctuary, and McAdam has invented a new terminology for the social life of the chimps there, most of them survivors of medical experiments. If you have any scientific interest in the distinctions and similarities between chimps and humans, this is a novel for you.

I wish I'd published: Kate Atkinson's enigmatic and melancholy novel Life After Life, which gives such a profound sense of the random nature of life. It describes the hardship of war almost incidentally, and, perhaps for that reason, so very convincingly – the quiet slide into austerity during and after both wars in itself is such a compelling story.

Jamie Byng Publisher, Canongate

The book that made my year: Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. Not only do I think the novel is one of the most original and rewarding reading experiences of 2013, but Ruth is one of the wisest, most appreciative and charming writers I have ever published. And the success this book has enjoyed, both here and all around the world, has been hugely gratifying.

Our book that deserved to do better: My biggest frustration of the year was probably the paperback of James Meek's The Heart Broke In not breaking out in a significant way. It's a brilliant portrait of modern Britain, razor sharp in its storytelling, and it has such a big, pulsing, complex heart.

I wish I'd published: As always, there are so many, but I think that Dave Eggers' The Circle, Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, Philipp Meyer's The Son and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch are tied in equal first. Each one of these remarkable novels challenged and delighted me in so many different ways.

Simon Winder Publishing director, Penguin Press

The book that made my year: An invidious question, but I would have to say if pressed Vic Gatrell's The First Bohemians – his gleeful recreation of the world of Hogarth and Rowlandson. I can say with some confidence that no other history book published this year features more sexual impropriety, drunken chaos or men in wigs.

Our book that deserved to do better: I was stung and puzzled that more people did not read Otto Dov Kulka's Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. It was universally treated by reviewers as one of the great meditations on the Holocaust – entirely the equal of Levi and Wiesel – and has now been published in most European languages, but in Britain it has so far failed to strike a chord.

I wish I'd published: No question – volume one of Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles: All These Years (Little, Brown). It is the worst-written book I have read in years (the effect is rather like wandering through a ruined building), but its helplessness gives it an integrity it might otherwise lack. Lewisohn may not be a writer, but he is a sleuth of genius and the book's vast length is more than justified. I would love to have published it just for the usual and legitimate editor's reason of wanting to feel vaguely involved at the far outer edge of great events.

Moira Forsyth Editorial director, Sandstone Press

The book that made my year: The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris. The stories of Chani, about to get married and lose her freedom, and the rabbi's wife, struggling to regain hers, generated huge debate in and out of the Orthodox Jewish community. Just as wonderful as the Man Booker longlisting has been how much readers love it, and tell us so.

Our book that deserved to do better: The Purchase by Linda Spalding has been longlisted for the Impac prize, so we hope this powerful novel set in pre-abolition America will now get the attention it deserves. This is a haunting story of a Quaker widower who, against the teachings of his faith, buys a slave. The consequences pursue his family down the generations.

I wish I'd published: To the Letter by Simon Garfield. We'd love to get more non-fiction like this: fascinating, well researched and fun to read.

Nicholas Pearson Publishing director, Fourth Estate

The book that made my year: Lucy Hughes-Hallett's The Pike, her brilliant portrait of Gabriele d'Annunzio, was years in the making and a complete revelation, not least because it pushed at the limits of what biography is capable of. This is something the Samuel Johnson judges recognised when they recently awarded her that prize. The book presented something of a publishing challenge – D'Annunzio is little known here – but we have been thrilled with what it has achieved.

Our book that deserved to do better: Gavin Corbett's wonderful novel This Is the Way captivated all of us at Fourth Estate. The book has a voice the like of which we haven't seen before. It was launched on a raft of praise from other writers, but in pure publishing terms we have to be honest and say that we have been a bit disappointed. Lovers of fiction, remember his name.

I wish I'd published: Back in the spring a friend pressed on me a short memoir called Wave (Virago). Sonali Deraniyagala somehow survived the 2004 tsunami, but lost her two young sons, her husband and her parents. She tells this unbearable story at the same time as beautifully reconstructing the family as it had been, a gift to herself and a gift to us. The book is heartbreaking, but it is a miracle.

Lennie Goodings Publisher, Virago

The book that made my year: What made my year in 2013 was celebrating Virago's 40th birthday. The political, publishing and bookselling landscape has changed dramatically since 1973 but thanks to our authors and our loyal readers Virago is still here and flourishing. It's made us very proud.

Our book that deserved to do better: American debut The Glass Ocean by Lori Baker had extraordinary pre-publication quotes from John Banville and Thomas Pynchon and was overlooked by almost all of the UK press – save for a wonderful review in the Guardian. It's a gorgeous literary novel set in Victorian Britain and contains some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read.

I wish I'd published: I so wanted to publish I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, who is a young virago for our times. We also loved We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo.

Paul Baggaley Publisher, Picador

The book that made my year: Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, a beautifully assured debut novel from a young Australian writer which has delighted critics and, most importantly, been adored by many readers already. As a 17-year-old, spending a lonely year in northern Iceland, Hannah discovered the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a woman condemned to death in 1829 for the murder of her lover. In Burial Rites she reimagines this story, drawing on the tradition of Icelandic storytelling and its unique landscape of fire and ice.

Our book that deserved to do better: We hoped to take Kent Haruf to a wider readership with his magnificent novel Benediction, but illness prevented him coming over and the reviews were strangely absent. Benediction is the third in a loose trilogy of novels set in Holt, Colorado. They are never flashy, and this exquisite restraint is perhaps why he has never fully gained commercial success here, but these three novels form one of the major achievements of contemporary American fiction, rivalling the great works of Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Annie Proulx in creating a mythical modern American landscape.

I wish I'd published: Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (Galley Beggar Press). I wasn't one of the many publishers to turn this down, and I hope I would have been perceptive enough to have recognised the genius behind this extraordinary and original novel if I had seen it. I was certainly utterly captivated by the voice when I read it. A justified winner of the Goldsmiths prize (which rewards "the novel in the novel"), it's undeniably challenging but totally rewarding: a beautiful, brutal, moving and lyrical outpouring of great technical skill, with a narrator who will remain with you long after you have read the last devastating page.