Crime Today News
For publisher Sayoni Basu, her young readers always come first. She has published for children for more than 20 years, shaping new generations into curious, intelligent readers. She made her way from Oxford University Press and Penguin India to children’s imprint Puffin. She was also the publishing director at Scholastic India (2005–11) and Amar Chitra Katha (2011–12).
However, 2012 saw Basu take a giant leap of faith. Along with children’s author Anushka Ravishankar, she started Duckbill, an independent publisher of books for children and young adults. Eight years after its inception, Duckbill became an imprint of Penguin Random House, but Basu and her team continue to – independently – make decisions on what they publish. In the 13 years of its existence, Duckbill has an built an enviable list of fiction (and nonfiction) across genres with entertaining stories, humour, and memorable characters that appeal to young and adult readers alike. Keeping up with the times, Duckbill has also published books of interest to a new generation of readers – about sexuality, human behaviour, disability, forgotten history, tolerance, and true equality among all sections of society.
In a conversation with Scroll, Basu talked about why the proliferation of various forms of media encourages Duckbill to publish better books, the image of the “reader” for a children’s publisher, the slow-moving school library systems in India, and more. Excerpts from the interview:
You have worked in children’s publishing for the longest time and have witnessed a couple of generations of children become readers. What was so attractive about English language children publishing when it was still so new in India?
It is always fun to work in a relatively new field! When I started publishing for children in 2001, there was only NBT [National Book Trust] and CBT [Children’s Book Trust] publishing in English, and Tara Press, Tulika Books and Karadi Tales had started not that long ago. There seemed to be a lot of room to do different things because many children in India read in English as well as in their mother tongues. There were so many exciting things one could do because it was a bit tabula rasa!
At what juncture in your career did you feel the desire to start your own publishing house? Tell us a bit about your partnership with Anushka Ravishankar. And the initial days of running the business. Also, why the name Duckbill?
Anushka and I believed that publishing Indian children’s books was a sustainable business in itself, and therefore, publishers needed to believe that and work on that assumption.
In my first place of employment, which was Penguin (there was no Random House at that point), Indian children’s books came at the end of a hierarchy where adult books were on top and foreign children’s books were in the middle. At Scholastic, where Anushka and I worked together, there were obviously no adult books, but foreign children’s books got precedence from salespeople at the publishing house and from distributors and booksellers. Also, we got tired of publishing books that we were asked to publish, which were books with educational value, and thoroughly enjoyed publishing silly and challenging books.
So, we decided that the only way to publish silly books and challenging books was to set up our own company. And so we did. And we did prove that a publishing house could survive on only Indian children’s books – as Karadi Tales and Tulika Books have also demonstrated.
All the days of running Duckbill were great fun. Challenging, maddening, very tiring but also exhilarating. Whether it was commissioning and editing (of course), or managing warehouse issues and learning about GST, or painting mugs and baking cakes, or packing books – we are all expert packers! – we did it all.
The name was decided in a matter of minutes at a point when we had to pick a name. We discovered that both Anushka and I liked the platypus because it was such an odd creature. And duckbill seemed to just click as a name. Not too much thought was devoted to it – it just happened very spontaneously.
Indian children’s publishing has a very soft spot for mythology and folktales. Was it especially hard to break new ground with newer genres for the Indian readership? The English-language scene was, once upon a time, quite set in its ways.
It wasn’t, really. We were clear we were not going to publish mythology and folktales or stories of talking animals (personal prejudice!), so we didn’t. And we survived. And we published a lot of books on unusual subjects – gay kids, land rights, disability, war, anger – and they sold enough to keep us going. And people – adults and kids – loved them and told us that. (Some schools disapproved a lot!) And we are delighted to see that books on these and many other unusual subjects are now accepted matter-of-factly in the Indian market.
What is interesting is that the international market also associates children’s books from India with mythology and folktales. This was one of the major barriers we faced when we tried to sell international rights for our books. “We love your books,” people would say, “but don’t you have something more traditional and Indian?”
Publishing for children is tricky because even though the readers are kids, it’s their parents who are making the decisions and have the purchasing power. As a publisher, who comes first – the child or the parent? Additionally, how does one convince the parent to let the child decide for themselves what they want to read?
Always the child. No question.
One cannot convince the parent. It will almost always be the parent selecting the book, though some parents will let the child pick one and they will chose another, and the child has to read both. But lots of parents just will not allow the child to choose. Maybe we just have to wait for a new generation of parents.
What is particularly interesting about the Duckbill catalogue is that many titles are geared toward a more “mature” reading level. For example, I’m thinking Zen or The School for Bad Girls or When the Black Birds Fly or The Piano – all quite heavy in their themes. So a child is reading about the freedom movement, the unrest in the North East, death… As a children’s publisher, what is your image of your “reader”?
I don’t think I have an image of a reader. I do believe children are very smart generally, and we adults habitually underestimate their intelligence and range of interests and their knowledge of the world. Children’s interests are as wide as, and sometimes more varied, as adults. So the idea is to publish across a wide range of subjects in the hope that some child will find a book that will “talk” to her.
And the world we live in makes children confront what you call heavy themes. War, discrimination, injustice – children confront this all the time. What is in life cannot be ignored in books, though of course, as “adult gatekeepers”, authors and publishers do tend to moderate how these themes are dealt with at different age levels.
And a lot of Duckbill books are just silly and funny – we are deeply invested in them. And we believe that like adults, the same child can enjoy both a silly book and a serious book.
There’s of course a lot of morality attached to children’s literature. I’m not fond of it but I’m aware of the risks of being risqué. Sometimes “good” literature might not always talk about the “right” things. How does a children’s publisher navigate this very tricky territory? I know Duckbill doesn’t do “moral of the story” books…
I think children are capable of reading about almost all subjects, provided that the level of detail or information is correct (but then who knows what is correct?). And that it is far better demystifying so-called difficult subjects in a book, where author and editor and external experts have thought through how to deal with it, than ignore the subject in the hope that the child will not find out about it!
The only consistent concession that I believe books for children should have is that somewhere and somehow, they should end on a note of positivity. It would be wrong to portray a world without hope of redemption or happiness, even if we as adults feel that is the case.
It is adult readers who have reviewed Duckbill books for Scroll. And they’ve loved what they read. I think it’s very fascinating how these titles have struck a chord with them. My question here is a bit personal – as an adult who works with the interest of children in mind, how has being a children’s publisher shaped you? Does being a mother also make you more receptive to a child’s taste?
I think being a publisher has shaped me more as a mother than the other way around since I was a publisher long before I became a mother. But I have always shamelessly eavesdropped on children’s and teenagers’ conversations – and talked to them directly, too (but one hears more interesting things when eavesdropping).
And I think my belief in children’s intelligence and agency to negotiate things has possibly shaped my bringing up of my son – because I have always trusted him (not always responsibly as a mother perhaps!) to tackle and resolve his own dilemmas.
It is my belief that all right-thinking adults should enjoy good books for children, but that may be my personal prejudice.
So many complaints about children not reading anymore. But publishers also say that children’s books sell very well. Which of these is true? Also, do you feel it is critical to adapt books into games, audiobooks, etc to survive?
Children do read – and children do not read. I believe that pretty much the same percentage of children read as they did in my schooldays 45 years ago. What is different is that now schools and parents want kids to read, though “approved” books largely! As the population grows, the number of readers grows.
I believe that what the choice of media available to children does today is not take away readers, but compel publishers to publish better books because a child has so many choices. And if what we produce is not good enough, the child will not read.
I do not feel it is critical to adapt books into games. Each story has its own right medium. Some things work better as games and some as books (just as some books work better as audiobooks than others). I am really happy that the day when every book was being made interactive seems to have happily passed.
When I was in school in the 2000s, the library was mostly Ruskin Bond, Enid Blyton, RL Stine, and Sudha Murty. It was next to impossible to find Indian writers, especially those who were not as well-known as the ones I mentioned. Apart from bookstores and online platforms, what are the efforts publishers like you are making to put your books in school libraries?
The average school library is still mostly Ruskin Bond, RL Stine, Enid Blyton and Sudha Murthy, do not worry! You would still feel completely at home if you went back to a school library!
We try to talk to librarians and language teachers, but as you know, conversations about books are often best one-on-one. So it happens, but slowly. Often schools – and who can blame them? – are looking for quick fixes and big names.
What I feel is a crying need for a librarians’ journal, like the American Librarians’ Journal, but for school libraries. It is impossible for a school librarian – who often isn’t a very dedicated reader herself, and even if she is – to keep track of what is being published in India and internationally. A journal like this, which gives information and which also talks about older books and how these can be used in the classroom and library, would be invaluable.
There are very few literature festivals that make space for children’s publishing. What’s the reason for reluctance, you think?
On the contrary, most literature festivals do make space for children’s books – the Jaipur Literature Festival is one exception nowadays. But sometimes, this is done in a rather token manner, with no thought to sensitive curation. And sometimes, children’s book authors do get a little second-class treatment (or so my authors report!) But by and large, children’s book session curation at festivals has improved hugely. And the many festivals dedicated solely to children’s books is something to be happy about.
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