Founded in 2012, Duckbill Books was crowned Publisher of the Year 2019 at the Publisher Next awards recently, while Duckbill titles have won the South Asian Book Award, the Crossword Book Award, the Neev Award, the ComicCon Award, Peekabook and the FICCI Publishing Awards among many others. Now it’s part of Penguin Random House India.
Although by far the biggest English-language trade publisher in India (3,000 backlist and 240+ new titles each year), PRH until now had only one children’s imprint, Puffin. Duckbill will become its second, with Duckbill co-founder Sayoni Basu on board as Consulting Editor, reporting to PRH children and young adult publishing head Sohini Mitra.
The PRH India press release explains,
Duckbill is a young and much-awarded publishing house run by primary platypus Sayoni Basu and principal platypus Anushka Ravishankar(who ina prepared statement said) “We have had seven exciting years discovering new authors and experimenting with different kinds of books, but we have felt the challenges of being a very small house selling books in a very large world. With Penguin Random House India’s amazing sales and marketing network, we hope Duckbill books will reach many new readers.
For PRH India and South East Asia, CEO Gaurav Shrinagesh said,
We are so excited to bring in Duckbill into the Penguin Random House India family. It is a true value add of an acquisition and we are looking forward to taking the wonderful world of storytelling that Duckbill team has built to a wider audience. Children’s publishing is one of our biggest assets, and as a company we would like to bring in good literary work that establishes new readers, generation after generation.’
The press release reminds is that,
Penguin Random House India is also the exclusive distribution partner for several leading local and international publishing houses in India and the subcontinent.
