Giancarlo DiTrapano, a defiantly independent publisher whose Tyrant Books, long run out of his cramped apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, issued volumes that big publishing houses wouldn’t touch and took chances on untested young writers, died on March 30 at a hotel in Manhattan. He was 47. His sister Lia DiTrapano Fairless confirmed the death but did not specify the cause.

Mr. DiTrapano occupied a roguish space in the American literary landscape. In an industry where book proposals are analyzed for their market promise on spreadsheets, he published books based on his bohemian whims, championing avant-garde work that explored drug addiction, explicit sexuality and memoir in the internet age. He nurtured writers who were raised online and who felt like outcasts in the legacy publishing world.