The books they loved and lost: publishers on their favourites – and the ones they wished they had on their own lists

Alexandra Pringle, editor-in-chief, Bloomsbury

The book that made my year: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Bloomsbury occupied half the Orange shortlist and this was the winner. It's a novel I fell desperately in love with and pre-empted half-wildly. Its publication has been a dream from beginning to end.

The book that deserved to do better: It has to be David Park's humane and beautiful The Light of Amsterdam. Yes, it was chosen for the Fiction Uncovered promotion; yes, it was shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year award. But it and its author deserve more. His day will come.

I wish I'd published: Zadie Smith's NW (Hamish Hamilton) because she is, quite simply, the bee's knees.

Richard Beswick, publishing director, Little, Brown & Abacus

The book that made my year: After a long and occasionally twitchy gestation, the publication of Tom Holland's epic retelling of the clash of ancient empires and the rise of Islam, In the Shadow of the Sword, was 90% joy and 10% sheer relief. The book deserved its near-universal praise (with the exception of a rather crotchety man in the Guardian) and reached number 3 in the bestseller list.

The book that deserved to do better: Jennie Erdal's brilliantly witty novel The Missing Shade of Blue sold very respectably and had glowing reviews. But in my dreams she was "podiuming" at the Guildhall.

I wish I'd published: I loved John Lanchester's Capital (Faber), which managed to be clever, funny, moving and informative. One of those on its own is pretty good for a novel.

Simon Winder, publishing director, Penguin Press

The book that made my year: I was particularly proud to have published Steve Roud and Julia Bishop's New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. Every copy we have sold has added to the sum of human happiness.

The book that deserved to do better: The Nolympics by Nicholas Lezard. The author and I were talking at the beginning of the year about the usual topic of the time: how the London Olympics was a disgusting nazified honeypot, from which some of the worst people in Britain were helping themselves to billions of pounds of public money, hiding behind the pointless actions of some monomaniac oddballs who ran about for a while or threw stuff. We thought it would be a fun idea if Nick wrote a day-by-day account of this outrage. Everything went exactly as planned – billions of pounds were taken off in sacks, glasses clinked and everyone geared up to move on to the financially extractive opportunities in Rio. The only unexpected event was that in the opening ceremony the letters "NHS" very briefly flashed up. This so completely disoriented liberals that they suddenly fell into line and went all Leni Riefenstahl for a fortnight. This, sadly, left The Nolympics, a very funny and engaging book, high, dry and unreviewed.

I wish I'd published: Chris Ware's Building Stories (Jonathan Cape). The serious publishing work on this unbelievably complicated and wonderful cardboard box filled with magazines, fold-outs, a diary and various bits of paper – all adding up to one of the great graphic novels – was done in New York and the Far East. But I would like to have been able to abuse the traditional editor's privilege of phoning an author up to burble about how much I admire, cherish and actually love him.

Robin Robertson, deputy publishing director, Jonathan Cape

The book that made my year: I was pleased for Sean Borodale, whose strange, intense and disarming first poetry collection, Bee Journal, has been shortlisted for many prizes, including the Costa and the Eliot in January. It's encouraging to see a fresh talent being noticed in an environment that is currently so fractured and factional.

The book that deserved to do better: Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod is a first book of stories, set largely in Windsor, Ontario. The styles and settings of these pieces couldn't be more different from his father Alistair's, but they are almost as good: honest, elegant, very powerful. Shortlisted for the Giller prize and already a Canadian bestseller, it received an extraordinary number of positive reviews comparing him to great Canadians such as Atwood, Munro and Ondaatje. Despite all this – and a series of very successful UK readings – the book did not sell in significant numbers, which can only be the result of the trade's prejudice against short stories.

I wish I'd published: John Banville's Ancient Light (Viking); Denis Johnson's Train Dreams (Granta). Two very different novels by two masters of the form.

Roland Philipps, managing director, John Murray

The book that made my year: Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper. Because Paddy was the greatest prose writer of the 20th century on the John Murray list, and because Artemis worked over so many years to produce her superb book, which summons the man in all his glory (and failings too). I was anxious that it would not appeal down the generations, but all ages of reader have taken the book up in huge numbers.

The book that deserved to do better: The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph. Joseph's second novel confirms him, to my mind, as one of the leading new Indian novelists – he tells great truths about modern India while being thoroughly entertaining. It got great reviews in a few places, but not enough, and not enough sales in a very tough environment.

I wish I'd published: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) – an electrifying novel, eclipsing even Wolf Hall – and Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways (Hamish Hamilton): travel writing, history, nature and people all beautifully woven together. Prose style aside, it reminded me of Patrick Leigh Fermor's best work. And Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (Vintage) had some of the most exciting prose and erudite insights of any book I read.

Chris Hamilton-Emery, director, Salt

The book that made my year: Without doubt the book that had the biggest impact on Salt was Alison Moore's Man Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse, a novel that transcends genre while playing with genre motifs, providing dark humour as well as a deliciously transgressive view of fate and the horrors of recursive human experience. It transformed our finances for 2012 and put us on the map as a fiction publisher.

The book that deserved to do better: Susan Wicks's third novel, A Place to Stop, is a revelatory morality tale and Wicks is an extraordinary prose stylist, well known for her award-winning poetry as well as a terrific memoir. This book puts all her strengths on show. It certainly deserved more critical approval.

I wish I'd published: Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, a triumph for another terrific small publisher, And Other Stories. As a subscriber, I'd read this before the Man Booker prize shortlisting, and it's a wonderful, sly page-turner that plays around with expectations. We bought Levy's backlist immediately after reading this.

Suzanne Baboneau, publishing director, Simon & Schuster

The book that made my year: Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles. A beautiful, understated debut to which I keep returning. It works on so many levels, making the reader stop and think about the rhythms of our lives and the enormous impact of one tiny twist of nature on the world, a community and a family.

The book that deserved to do better: Tim Lott's Under the Same Stars is the dazzling story of two brothers who go on a road trip to the US looking for their missing father. Their relationship is strained at the best of times, the search for a father who deserted them long ago striking to the very heart of their rivalry. Reviewers were all over this, his first novel for five years; had their excitement translated to book sales, we would certainly have seen a major bestseller.

I wish I'd published: Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). I would have loved to have taken this extraordinary, one-of-a-kind thriller by the scruff of its neck and tried to publish the hell out of it here, to emulate even some of the incredible success it has had in America. The paperback deserves to be huge on word-of-mouth alone.

Jamie Byng, publisher, Canongate

The book that made my year: Richard Holloway's memoir Leaving Alexandria is the sixth book we have published together and the first to hit the bestseller lists. He deserves all the stunning responses he has had for this wise and generous and rewarding book. He is also a joy to know and work with.

The book that deserved to do better: James Meek's The Heart Broke In is a major book in every sense by one of the most entertaining novelists writing today. I had hoped it might do even better than The People's Act of Love, and it has a lot of fans, but it never got any prize luck. It's been nominated for the Costa Novel of the Year award, though, so perhaps it will end up getting the wide readership it deserves.

I wish I'd published: Always hard to pick, but for financial reasons, Fifty Shades (Arrow); for pure entertainment, Rod: The Autobiography (Century); and for quality, Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (Granta).

Philip Gwyn Jones, executive publisher, Granta Books & Portobello Books

The book that made my year: Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Portobello). Who would think that a book about poverty in India could capture so many readers and bag so many prize nominations (including the Guardian's)? To see great literature triumphant is always energising. It proves again that publishing can be surprising, and that masterpieces can still sell to the many.

The book that deserved to do better: Keith Ridgway's Hawthorn & Child (Granta). This gave me my first experience of the publishing power of Twitter. While booksellers failed to order the book in any quantity, up stepped the network of really superb critics who commune about contemporary lit on Twitter to rally round. It has been picking up some "book of the year" mentions, so things are looking up for one of the best novelists on these islands.

The book I wish I'd published: If I must single one out, I'll go for Zadie Smith's NW. People complain that she leaves things incomplete, takes liberties, should be edited more and so on, but, dammit, she remains by far the most natural and most challenging novelist contemporary Britain has at hand to help imagine itself into what it's becoming.

Stefan Tobler, publisher, And Other Stories

The book that made my year: Swimming Home by Deborah Levy. It was so gratifying to see it chosen for the Man Booker shortlist. Levy is finally achieving the recognition she has long deserved – and her imminent book of stories, Black Vodka, will now reach the audience it deserves.

The book that deserved to do better: Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt. The novel, a hilarious "what if …" book about corporate culture and cliché, hasn't done badly, but she's such a unique writer, it's disappointing that it hasn't reached more readers.

I wish I'd published: Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan, a gem of a book in Canongate's Canon series. The slapstick is a hoot but then the lyricism takes you to a much more delicate place. At a punishingly busy time of the year, reading this book was a pure pleasure.

Nicholas Pearson, publishing director, Fourth Estate

The book that made my year: Best not dream that the first two instalments of a trilogy will both win the Man Booker. Hilary Mantel should have been read in huge numbers for the past 20 years, but it is never too late for everyone to catch up.

The book that deserved to do better: Ian Sansom's Paper: An Elegy. As we enter a world beyond paper, Sansom tells us just how the white stuff has shaped us up to now. Non-fiction at its very best.

I wish I'd published: I didn't have the nerve in the vicious auction for Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds (Sceptre), which recently won this paper's First Book award. It is full of a strange poetry and a fierce honesty, and deserves the high praise that has come its way.