"great publisher" is a perfectly correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to describe a publisher that has a generally good reputation or a publisher that has produced especially good work. For example: "The 'Great Books' series is published by a great publisher, known for the quality of their titles."
When Roger died, an Italian publisher pronounced, "He was not a great publisher, but he was a great man".
The Post, once a provincial daily, became a great newspaper with national ambitions, and Mrs. Graham became a great publisher.
From the story Kachka tells, Roger emerges as a truly great publisher but very far from a great man.
"She was also a great publisher who read manuscripts, made editorial notes and devoted all her energy to telling the world how much we loved the book".
His rise, no less than his services as a great publisher and editor, must be an inspiration to a multitude of ambitious and stout-hearted young men.
She describes her visits to the grave of Simone Weil, the garden of the great publisher Gallimard, and the Parisian streets of Patrick Modiano's novels.
Like many great publishers, he will be remembered for the books he brought to the reading public.
It was a very different time; a time of great publishers such as Liveright, Cerf and Charles Scribner's Sons, and a time of great writers, too.
Weldon has to be the main UK spokesman for a mega-merger that some feared would leave two great publishers lost in a muddy bureaucracy.
New digital technologies are liberating the way we can engage with stories, fiction and fact, wherever and whenever we want them; so what a wonderful time to be joining one of the world's great publishers".
And it matters because it's Steidl's attention to details like these - the look of a spine, the smell of ink, the way different kinds of papers feel on one's fingertips - that makes him one of the world's great publishers.
