On the morning of October 21, Publishers Lunch announced that Catapult Books was being sold and would wind down operations by the end of the month. According to the Catapult Union, the company announced plans for a sale amidst the National Labor Relations Board vote, and that “all employees of the company were directed to maintain confidentiality on this matter, while continuing to acquire and publish books for the employer.”
Beyond this, the original report was light on details. Who was the buyer? Would the sale also include the full portfolio of imprints including Counterpoint, Soft Skull, and Hawthorn Books (which the company purchased merely a year ago)? Publishers Weekly followed up with more reporting soon after, but still, many questions remain—including what will happen to the 16 frontlists titles across Catapult’s four imprints that are scheduled to be released in spring 2027.
In the days that have followed, the shocking news has settled and the loss is coming into full view. An outpouring of grief from authors and readers alike has flooded social media. And what we’re left with is a gaping hole in our publishing landscape that gets wider with every passing year.
In the writing world, impermanence is the only constant. From the literary magazines that first publish tomorrow’s literary stars (like Glimmer Train, The Gettysburg Review, and Catapult’s very own magazine) to the publishers who set careers in motion, we’ve become far too accustomed to saying goodbye to our literary institutions and accepting the trail of lost art that is left in their wake.
It’s difficult to put into words what the loss of Catapult Books means to the publishing world. Since its founding in 2015, Catapult has grown into one of the leading forces in the independent publishing landscape, with imprints that carried a recognizable brand and record for excellence: Catapult, with its flair for experimentation and boundary-pushing work; Soft Skull, the punk rocker of the literary world that pushed against conventions with style and attitude; and Counterpoint, which moved deftly across genres while often highlighting the beauty of the American West and contemporary Native American literature.
Catapult Books quickly succeeded in a grueling business. Countless best book of the year entries, book club picks, bestsellers, and frequent nominations for the Booker Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and more (including a recent National Book Awards longlisted release in Kimberly Blaeser’s Red Ants).
But perhaps most importantly, Catapult Books gave a platform to the authors and stories the Big 5 too often ignore. The talented team of editors, publicists, marketing professionals, designers, and salespeople proved indies can create both commercial and critical sensations out of brilliantly written books that others would deem too experimental, niche, or against the grain of literary trends other publishers chase.
Of course, the beauty of the art that Catapult Books brought to the world makes it easy to forget where the money came from, which in this case was co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Koch, daughter of a billionaire oil tycoon. Armed with an MFA degree, exorbitant wealth, and a stated “apolitical” worldview, she helped fund a small literary empire that spanned a multi-imprint press, a literary magazine, and writing classes. It was an uneasy alliance for many readers, because the relationship between art and capital always carries the odor of roses and shit. But for a while, many were able to convince themselves that she at least seemed committed to literature in ways so many other wealthy patrons aren’t.
That is until 2023, when just a week after Catapult Books announced it was shutting down its magazine and writing program, Koch introduced us to her latest project: The Perception Box, a way of understanding the effects our biases and experiences have on our lives. Seemingly overnight, Catapult Books edited its mission to state that the company “publishes literary fiction and artful narrative nonfiction that engages with our Perception Box, the powerful metaphor we use to define the structure and boundaries of how we see others in their full humanity, and invites new ways of seeing and being seen.” Sure.
But Catapult Books continued to shine despite these changes, publishing unforgettable books year after year. Yet here we are.
It’s difficult not to view this recent announcement as anything other than a pitiful retaliation against the Catapult Union and a giant middle finger to the mighty team that consistently built new literary stars and preserved the work of icons such as Wendell Berry. In this era of consolidation and greed, I can’t say I’m surprised the co-founder decided to pack up her toys in her Perception Box and leave at the first sign of worker solidarity. But perhaps if she were able to look beyond those narrow confines of her own perceived realities she claims to want to unpack, she would see the devastation she’s leaving in her wake for her team, her authors, and readers everywhere.
I often tell my team that every book is a miracle. Perhaps that makes me a bad critic, but as a writer, I can’t help but think about the hours of individual toil, the years of searching for the right champions in their agent and editor, the countless rounds of revision and copy edits, the thankless pitching from publicists, the full and empty bookstore events, and the sheer luck that goes into every book that makes it onto a shelf. Writing is a blisteringly beautiful art and a miserable business. So even when I disagree with an author’s choices or don’t connect with a story, I try to approach every piece with the graciousness and care each book deserves. That’s what I hope that the Chicago Review of Books exemplifies in all of our coverage.
This is why the news of Catapult Books’s sale infuriates me. With every closure and consolidation, we make these miracles all the more unlikely. Publishing is, and always has been, a slow moving industry that runs on trends. As large publishers continue to feel the pressures of AI, tightening economics, and changing reading habits, we are seeing the leash continue to shorten when it comes to building new literary stars. Gone are the days in which an author can develop their voices across multiple books regardless of their performance, as more and more marketing duties now fall upon the individual and their sales track follows them wherever they go.
Independent publishers are the heartbeat of the industry, offering the few spaces to truly develop authors across their careers and take chances on projects that may not fit into the Big 5’s algorithmic trend lines—the curious, the eclectic, the courageous, and the visionary books that push upon the parameters of what literature can become. Catapult Books and its imprints were the rare example of a publisher that could take these bold chances and put the necessary resources behind their books to truly build long-lasting careers. Losing Catapult, Counterpoint, Soft Skull, and Hawthorne Books will narrow the scope of our literature and flatten the types of stories we get in the years to come.
And for what? To make a quick buck from the press’s illustrious backlist while trampling on the future of countless talented authors (including 16 authors who thought their dreams came true when they received offers and now must worry whether those dreams will be dashed)? To prove a petty point to workers trying to make publishing—a notoriously difficult business in which to make a living —a bit more sustainable? To move on to a self-help career? For someone who claims to love art, Elizabeth Koch proved to be nothing more than everything her family name will forever be known for: A craven pillager of the world.
Coincidentally, Koch has her own book coming out next April titled The Perception Box: Reframe Your Stories, Reclaim Yourself. The marketing copy notes that “we assume we see ourselves and others clearly, but much of what we react to is filtered through fears and mindsets we rarely question,” and that Koch “invites readers to uncover the internal narratives that pressure and punish us, and to begin expanding beyond them.” If you think that sounds a little too similar to the worldview of the sleazy motivational speaker in Donnie Darko played by Patrick Swayze, you’re not alone. Perhaps there will be a book tour where you can ask a question or two. I’m sure we all have a few.
If art reaches for the universal and the enduring, then why does everything in our writing world have to always feel so impermanent? If we are doomed to this moment in which billionaires will damn our publishers to shutter their doors, damn their employees to powerlessness, damn their authors to the AI slop trough, and damn the readers to accept it all at the end of the day, then maybe it’s time to rethink things on a grander scale. It’s time we stop relying on billionaires to be the single funding source for the books we relish, as we know that they can be fickle, careless, and lacking in the very empathy that makes literature meaningful in the first place.
If the structure continues to be squeezed, maybe it’s time to build a new structure entirely. Stop arguing whether men are reading and whether books are dying and start remembering the role of literature and discussing how we foster community from a solitary practice. At this very moment, a new generation of young cinephiles is flooding theaters at record numbers to experience films their parents and grandparents once enjoyed. So we know the appetite for enjoying art with our community is out there. It’s simply a matter of rebuilding ours. Support your independent presses that are continuing to do outstanding work despite the odds, and start a press in Chicago or Des Moines or Wichita or Reno when you crave stories that the corporate houses won’t give you. Attend your local literary events and create your own, ones that are strange and niche and call to you: read and run clubs, dinner parties, open mic nights, camping trips, art in the park, film screenings of literary adaptations, book swaps. Remember that the books that echoed through you like a tremor in the earth most likely did the same to someone else, and could do so again if you spread the word. Find a literary community, or build one yourself.
And for the love of god, never trust a billionaire.
I know these answers are insufficient, and I really wish I had a better plan. I just know our review exists to celebrate literature and writers, and I’d like their art to last.
