Independent Publishers Group has cut staff on its publishing side by a third and will reduce its title count by approximately a quarter during what IPG CEO Joe Matthews has characterized as “a year of transition.” Matthews confirmed that IPG has laid off about 25 employees this year, including 15 last week. Most were at IPG’s publishing imprints, Matthews said, although a few warehouse workers and back office personnel were also let go.

Casualties at Chicago Review Press and Triumph Books included Cynthia Sherry, group publisher, who had worked for the company since 1989. Sherry began her career at the press as an accounts payable manager before moving into editorial in 1996, as senior editor. She has been CRP publisher since 2007 and was named group publisher in 2019 following a group restructuring.

The cuts are only the latest blow to one of the last standing independent book distributors in the U.S., which currently employs approximately 150 people. The reductions come two years after IPG laid off almost a third of the staff at Chicago Review Press and six months after it cut its in-house sales team and replaced it with commission reps.

“It has been a challenging year,” Matthews wrote in an email to PW. “While IPG continues to grow through the addition of wonderful publishers, we see the model shifting and are restructuring accordingly.”

In a subsequent telephone interview, Matthews explained that due to “shifts in the business,” the decision was made to “rethink and reboot” IPG’s publishing program. He said that changes in Amazon’s algorithms plus the growing importance of social media in promoting books have convinced him that “it’s time for new leadership and new ideas” for the publishing program to remain sustainable.

In addition to cutting one-third of its publishing employees, Matthews has also reduced IPG's publishing lists by approximately 25% "across both units." Matthews said in 2026 he intends to bring in new acquisitions editors and new ideas. "We’ve been doing the same thing for a long time [and] a great book with a great cover doesn’t move the needle as in the past,” he said.

CRP, which was founded in 1973, publishes books under eight imprints: its flagship CRP imprint, CRP Children’s, Amberjack, Duet Books, Interlude Press, Lawrence Hill Books, Academy Chicago, Council Oak Books, and Parenting Press. Triumph Books has been publishing sports books since 1989. Moving forward, associate publisher Michelle Williams will run Chicago Review Press. Triumph publisher Noah Amstadter remains in that position.

“We’re grateful to Cynthia and her contributions to the business over the past 36 years,” Matthews said, “but it was time for a change. But we're grateful and we'll be giving her our highest severance pay possible." All laid-off employees, he said, received severance pay.

While some perennial strong-selling backlist published by IPG imprints have dropped in sales—some by as much as 25-30%—the distribution side of the company, Matthews said, is growing. Since the beginning of 2025, IPG has signed 43 new clients “worth $20 million in gross sales,” he said.

Matthews noted that after concerns about the Trump administration's tariff policy led to a slowdown in the number of books released in the first half of the year, the third quarter has rebounded and he is anticipating a strong fourth quarter as well. “Prospects for 2026 are great,” he added. “We think that we’ll be back at 2021 levels, which was every publishers’ best year.”

This article has been updated with further information.