Though his intellectual legacy rests on his books, Cohen never earned his livelihood in academic settings, nor did he support himself on his writings alone. In 1951, after leaving the Jewish Theological Seminary, he and his friend Cecil Hemley co-founded Noonday Press. (It was later asserted by Hemley's wife that Cohen "was there for his money, not his talent.") Small as it was, Noonday Press soon had a backlist of world-class authors, such as Karl Jaspers, Louise Bogan, Machado de Assis, Sholom Aleichem, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Then in 1955, Cohen established Meridian Press, "a quality-paperback list," which, notably, published Hannah Arendt's revised edition of "Origins of Totalitarianism". Mainly focusing on reprints, books like Jacques Maritain's "Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry" and Constantin Stanislavski's "My Life in Art" sold especially well. Yet the 1950s were the heyday of quality paperback presses, and Meridian competed fiercely with larger presses in the field, notably Doubleday and New American Library of World Literature. In 1960, Cohen sold Meridian Press to World Publishing, where he was also, briefly, an editor.