Catapult Books, the independent publisher behind PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle award-winning titles, has sold its assets and expects to end operations by Oct. 30.

The sale leaves roughly 20 union workers without jobs and the fate of 16 titles scheduled through spring 2027 uncertain, Publishers Weekly first reported. The buyer has not been publicly identified. The Catapult Workers Collective said the sale covers assets only and that workers were told their employment would not carry over.

The union is negotiating a severance package, according to Publishers Weekly. Catapult management could not be reached for comment by the trade publication.

The closure has drawn an outpouring from Southern California's literary community. Author Gina Frangello, whose "Blow Your House Down" was published by Counterpoint Press, a Catapult imprint, told the Los Angeles Times the publisher is "intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature."

Frangello called the closure a huge loss for Los Angeles and the West Coast. She praised editorial director Dan Smetanka, saying she had never experienced the kind of intimate publishing relationship she had with him at Counterpoint in more than 20 years of publishing books.

Elizabeth Koch and Andy Hunter co-founded Catapult in 2015. Koch, the company's chief executive and daughter of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, backed the venture with substantial funding. Hunter stepped down as publisher in February 2022 and was succeeded by Alyson Forbes, according to Publishers Weekly.

The company merged with Bay Area-based Counterpoint Press in 2016, adding the Counterpoint and Soft Skull Press imprints. It acquired Portland-based Hawthorne Books in November 2025. In early 2023, Catapult closed its online magazine and writing-classes program to focus on book publishing. Its writing program had served more than 15,000 students, according to the publisher.

The union said the company announced its planned sale while workers were voting on whether to unionize earlier this year. The roughly 20-member group had filed for an election seeking better pay, job stability and clearer communication from executives. An "overwhelming majority" voted to join UAW Local 2110 in June, the union announced.

Miriam Vance, a member of the union's bargaining committee and a contracts and rights associate at Catapult, said in a statement to Publishers Weekly that she was "devastated" for her colleagues and for the end of the company as she had known it. Vance said she hoped the books would be considered by a prospective buyer but called the situation very difficult for the staff who worked to bring those titles into the world.

Susan Straight, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, emailed the Times a note contrasting the closure with a scene she witnessed at a Barnes & Noble grand opening in Ontario. More than a hundred readers lined up outside, some bringing chairs to wait, Straight wrote. About 50 people bought copies of her Catapult memoir "In the Country of Women" and her Counterpoint novel "Sacrament."

The demand is real.

"Americans are still reading," Straight wrote to the Times. "I see it every day in my community, which needs books by presses like Counterpoint and Catapult."

Tod Goldberg, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction this year for "Only Way Out," posted a social media tribute crediting Smetanka and Counterpoint with taking a chance on "a book others wouldn't touch," the Times reported. Goldberg said what was lost was not merely a publishing house but "a culture of excellence, of risk taking, plus a dash of punk rock."