Chicago Review Press, Inc., the parent company of Chicago Review Press and Independent Publishers Group, announced on Friday that it has acquired Parenting Press, effective January 1, 2017. Its founding publisher, Elizabeth Crary, intends to retire from publishing to focus on her work as an educator and author. Parenting Press's current publisher, Carolyn Threadgill, and four other employees will no longer work for the company after the acquisition, when all operations will transfer to Chicago from its current headquarters in Seattle.
Parenting Press will become CRP’s sixth imprint, and its publishing program will be overseen by CRP publisher Cynthia Sherry. IPG will continue to distribute new releases and backlist.
Parenting Press was founded in 1979 by Crary when she self-published Without Spanking or Spoiling: A Practical Approach to Toddler and Preschool Guidance. Since then, it has published books for parents, teachers, and child guidance professionals about issues having to do with raising children and adolescents. It also publishes books for children, and its bestselling title is a picture book, The Way I Feel by Janan Cain, with approximately two million copies in print in several languages since its release in 2000.
Up until 2014, the press published five-six titles each year, but released only one title in 2014 and in 2015. No new titles have been released in 2016. There are approximately 70 Parenting Press titles in print.
Chicago Review Press, founded in 1973, currently publishes about 65 new titles annually under five imprints: Chicago Review Press, Lawrence Hill Books, Ball Publishing, Zephyr Press, and Academy Chicago.
This story has been updated with further information about Parenting Press.
