The East Asia Publishers Conference (EAPC) is composed of publishing professionals from various parts of East Asia who specialize in books on the humanities, social sciences, literature and the arts -- books that form the nucleus of each region's culture. East Asia has enjoyed a long history of cultural interchange via the medium of the printed word, but the past century has seen this flow reduced to a trickle. Now, at a time when books and quality publishing are in crisis, EAPC represents an attempt to restore this flow to its previous vigor. With the support of the Toyota Foundation, EAPC held its inaugural conference in September 2005 in Tokyo, Japan, followed by conferences in Hangzhou, China (March 2006), Seoul, Korea (October 2006) Hong Kong (March 2007), and Taiwan (November 2007). Reports and discussions at these meetings on the state of East Asian publishing have fostered greater understanding of the problems regional publishers share in common, yielding proposals for specific programs such as the establishment of East Asian copyright standards, training of a new generation of publishing professionals, and compilation of a catalog of essential East Asian literature.