Catapult Books, the independent publisher that has championed authors across Southern California and beyond, has been sold and will shutter operations in just over a week.

The Los Angeles Times reports the company, launched by Elizabeth Koch and Andy Hunter more than a decade ago, is selling assets only, and the Catapult Workers Collective was notified that employment will not roll over to the new buyer.

The union, which counts roughly 20 staff across publishing departments, is now hashing out a severance package.

What makes the timing sting, per the outlets, is that the company announced plans to sell while staff were in the middle of a union vote.

The Catapult Workers Collective had filed for an election earlier in the year seeking better pay, job stability and clearer communication from executives, the Los Angeles Times reports, and both outlets say the union was told continued employment with the prospective buyer is not an option.

The Los Angeles Times also notes that CEO Koch, daughter of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, launched the nonprofit storytelling project Unlikely Collaborators in 2021, and that Catapult's digital magazine and writing courses were cut in 2023.

Company representatives and the union did not respond to requests for comment, according to The Mercury News.

Since its 2015 debut, Catapult and its imprints have been an awards force, winning the PEN/Faulkner Award, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the E. M. Forster Award, the Costa Novel Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and more, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Authors quoted by both outlets framed the loss as cultural, not just corporate. The Times quotes Gina Frangello calling Catapult "intrinsic to L.A. culture and L.A. literature" and "a huge loss for the West Coast."

The Mercury News quotes novelist Tod Goldberg calling the news "heartbreaking and devastating" and "the end of what I view as an institution of West Coast publishing as we know it," while crediting editorial director Dan Smetanka with taking chances on "a book others wouldn't touch."

Susan Straight, writing to The Times, described lines of a hundred readers at a new Barnes & Noble in Ontario, saying "Americans are still reading — I see it every day in my community, which needs books by presses like Counterpoint and Catapult."

The buyer has not been publicly identified.

Goldberg told The Mercury News he has not been told who is purchasing the company — "so y'all can stop texting me" — but said he is confident the buyer recognizes the value of a "vibrant, still-selling backlist" that once carried the company, while predicting "inevitably, it won't be the same."

Beyond the staff departures, open questions include the fate of the 16 titles scheduled through spring 2027 and whether authors like Goldberg, who still has a book contracted with Counterpoint, will see those projects land.

Frangello, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, said Smetanka ran things the way they used to be "in the storied, fabled days of publishing before everything went corporate," and Meredith Maran told The Times that Counterpoint "humanized publishing, revered its authors."

For now, the Los Angeles Times says, the collective is negotiating severance as the literary world it built marks the end of an era.