Hachette Book Group has laid off an unspecified number of employees who joined the company at the end of last year following HBG’s purchase of Union Square & Co. from Barnes & Noble. An HBG spokeswoman confirmed the layoffs to PW on January 24, noting that the company is “implementing staff realignments to maximize synergies and minimize redundancies.” People at the company familiar with the matter confirmed that “less than half” of the staff at Union Square was affected, but could not comment further.
“HBG is committed to supporting everyone through this transition,” Ben Sevier, president and publisher of the Grand Central Publishing Group, where Union Square is now housed, wrote in a letter to staff last week. In a follow-up statement to PW, he added that, “while we cannot share specific personnel details, I want to emphasize that we’ve approached this transition with care, ensuring that all impacted employees were given as much notice as possible, and provided with severance packages as well as support to help them through this change.”
Under the terms of the November purchase of Union Square, all staff, publishing assets, and trademarks of Union Square Publishing, formerly known as Sterling Publishing Co., were transferred to HBG. (B&N had previously acquired Sterling in 2003, and rebranded it in January 2022.)
In addition to adding Union Square to its business last year, HBG expanded upon the restructuring efforts it began in 2023, when parent company Hachette Livre brought HBG and its U.K.–based counterpart, Hachette UK, under “a new English-language management structure.” The bulk of those reorganization efforts involved the further integration of Workman Publishing, which HBG acquired in 2021 and which HBG had agreed to keep Workman employees for at least three years as part of the deal.
As part of the reorganization, staff at Algonquin Books and Algonquin Young Readers were cut and the imprints were moved into Little, Brown and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, respectively, while the Hachette Books and Hachette Go imprints were dissolved. HBG also launched a new division, the Workman Running Press Group, and Grand Central brought former Little, Brown publisher Reagan Arthur back into the fold, following her dismissal from the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, in order to launch a new, as-yet-unnamed imprint.
This article has been updated with further information and for clarity.