Catapult Books Sale Raises Questions for Authors and Independent Publishing

Catapult Books’ planned sale puts a hard question before independent publishing: what happens to the books, authors and editorial work that depend on a press when its owner decides to step away? The company is set to wind down operations by October 30, leaving 16 books scheduled for spring 2027 without a clear future. The buyer and the scope of the sale remain central unanswered questions.

Publishers Lunch reported the news on the morning of October 21. The Catapult Union said the company announced its sale plans amid a National Labor Relations Board vote, while directing employees to keep the matter confidential and continue acquiring and publishing books. Publishers Weekly later added reporting, though key details remained unsettled: who is buying the company, and whether the deal includes its full group of imprints?

A press built around distinct literary identities

Founded in 2015, Catapult grew into a prominent independent publisher with three recognizable imprints: Catapult, Soft Skull and Counterpoint. The company also acquired Hawthorn Books a year before the sale news. The four imprints gave the group room to publish across different sensibilities. Catapult built a reputation for experimental work; Soft Skull brought a punk inflection to books that challenged convention; Counterpoint ranged across genres and often drew attention to the American West and contemporary Native American literature.

The press made its mark in a demanding business. Its books appeared on best-of-the-year lists and in book clubs, found bestseller audiences and earned frequent nominations for prizes including the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Kimberly Blaeser’s Red Ants was recently longlisted for the National Book Awards.

For the Chicago Review of Books writer, those results matter alongside a wider achievement: Catapult gave authors and stories a home when larger publishers might have judged them too experimental, too specialized or out of step with current tastes. The author argues that the editors, publicists, marketers, designers and sales staff made those books visible and helped them reach readers. The press also preserved work by established writers such as Wendell Berry while building new literary careers.

That combination of editorial risk and practical support is difficult to replace. An independent publisher can make room for a book that doesn’t fit an obvious trend, then bring the staff and resources needed to find its readers. The writer sees Catapult as a rare example of a press that could take such chances and support authors over time.

The owner’s role complicates the legacy

Catapult’s funding came from co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Koch, the daughter of a wealthy oil tycoon. The source describes an uneasy relationship between the press’s literary work and the wealth behind it. Koch, who had an MFA and described her worldview as “apolitical,” supported a multi-imprint publisher, a literary magazine and writing classes. For a time, some readers believed she was committed to literature in a way many wealthy patrons are not.

That impression shifted in 2023. A week after Catapult announced it would close its magazine and writing program, Koch introduced The Perception Box, a project about how bias and experience shape people’s lives. Catapult then revised its mission statement to connect its publishing to the project’s idea of a “Perception Box,” describing books that engage with how people see one another and invite new ways of seeing and being seen. The writer treats that shift with skepticism, while acknowledging that Catapult continued to publish memorable books afterward.

The sale announcement has sharpened that skepticism. The writer reads the timing as retaliation against the Catapult Union and a show of disregard for the employees who built the press. That is the writer’s interpretation; the available reporting leaves the circumstances and terms of the sale unclear. What is clear in the piece is the human cost of that uncertainty: employees, authors and readers are left wondering what becomes of the work already underway.

Sixteen spring books face an uncertain path

The 16 titles scheduled for spring 2027 make the consequences especially immediate. Their authors had accepted offers and expected to see their books published; now they must wait to learn whether those plans will hold. The source asks whether a buyer will take on the publishing list, including those books, but supplies no answer. Without that information, the sale’s effect on the authors and their manuscripts remains unknown.

The writer frames each book as the product of years of effort: drafting and revision, the search for an agent and editor, copy edits, publicity and bookstore events, alongside the luck required for a book to reach shelves. That perspective informs the writer’s approach at the Chicago Review of Books, which aims to treat books with care even when a reviewer doesn’t connect with an author’s choices or a story.

The closure also fits a broader pattern the writer finds alarming: literary magazines and publishing houses disappear, and their loss can mean fewer places for authors to develop across multiple books. The piece argues that larger publishers face pressure from AI, tighter economics and changing reading habits. At the same time, marketing responsibilities increasingly fall on authors, whose sales histories can follow them from book to book.

Building support beyond a single benefactor

For the writer, Catapult’s sale shows the fragility of relying on a wealthy individual as a press’s main source of support. Such backing can sustain ambitious publishing, but the owner’s decision to leave can put staff, authors and future books at risk all at once. The writer’s proposed response is to build a broader literary community: support independent presses, start local ones when readers want books that larger companies don’t pursue, and create gatherings around shared reading.

The examples are deliberately local and varied: reading and running groups, dinner parties, open mic nights, camping trips, outdoor art, film screenings of literary adaptations and book swaps. The point is to make reading a shared practice as well as a solitary one, so that books readers value can find new audiences through conversation and community.

The piece closes without claiming that these steps can reverse Catapult’s sale or guarantee a future for the 16 spring books. The writer admits that the answers feel insufficient and wishes for a better plan. Still, the practical takeaway is clear: independent presses need readers’ support, and literary communities can be built wherever people gather around stories. The next meaningful sign will be whether the sale brings clarity for Catapult’s authors and the books already on its schedule.