At the Tiré à part conference held in Quebec city in October 2003, speakers from artist-run centres from across Canada discussed 30 years of experience in publishing. Themes such as audience, production, funding, professionalisation and distribution encouraged the identification and exploration of current issues. These are put in context here by a general overview of the development of the genre as well as a short history of production by artist-run centres such as Art Metropole, Artspeak, Artexte and the Bookmobile project.