"I do not believe all kids have to read."
A conversation with children's publisher and editor Sayoni Basu
A good conversation is one of the joys of life, and even more so when that conversation is with children’s editor and publisher, Sayoni Basu, who has been an editor of books for children for so long that the kids who read the first books she edited may now have kids of their own. Sayoni started her publishing career at Oxford University Press and Penguin India, moving to children’s publishing with Puffin in 2001. She was later the publishing director at Scholastic India and then at Amar Chitra Katha. In 2012, together with acclaimed children’s author Anushka Ravishankar, she founded Duckbill Books.
I have the privilege and immense joy of calling Sayoni a friend. We met more than twenty years ago, when she was an editor with Puffin and I an aspiring writer. It was my great good fortune that she liked the stories I took to her.
Sayoni and I have had many conversations over the years, about life and living, writing and publishing—which, in the end, are all the same thing really. In recent times, our chats have been long-distance, though as joyful as any we’ve had over cups of tea and coffee. Here is one such conversation, which I publish with her permission and my grateful thanks.
RC: You began your career in publishing with OUP and Penguin India, and soon moved to children’s publishing—with Puffin in 2001. What attracted you to children’s publishing? And in particular, English language publishing for children?
SB: I have never been particularly organized in my approach to working, so I can’t say much of it was planned. Penguin was restarting Puffin and starting Ladybird in India, and I kind of drifted into it as one of the few people in office who read children’s books for pleasure. And once I was in it, it was very interesting and deeply challenging, so I stuck on. And over the years, I have found more and more things that I absolutely felt I had to do, so I continued sticking. Even after twenty-plus years, there is so much old and new that I still find has to be done.
The answer to the English language part is simple. As one acquires skills, so one loses skills, and one of the things I have lost is my facility with Bengali. Anyway, publishing in each language is a different ecosystem, with distinctive practices, marketing and distribution systems, so I don’t think I could have specialised in any other language as well.
RC: Books written specifically for children are a relatively recent phenomenon in India—though in Bangla books for children have been around for at least 150 years if not more. Did you read the children’s literature in Bangla growing up? If so, what were your favourites books/stories/poems/writers? Did this early reading influence your decision to enter children’s publishing and the books you chose to publish?
SB: I grew up in Calcutta, in a family where we all spoke Bengali. So English was largely for school. And yes, like all good Bengali children, I grew up reciting Sukumar Roy and Tagore. My favourite as a child was Lila Majumdar’s Podi Pishir Bormi Baksho.
I am not sure if the early reading influenced my decision to enter children’s publishing. There was, for the first four years of my life, no television—so all we could do was read! But yes, I do have a predisposition to funny books, which I suppose could be traced to Lila Majumdar!
RC: You have been a part of children’s publishing in India for almost 25 years. How has this world changed since you first entered it? Has it changed YOU as a person? Or changed your view of children’s publishing?
The world has become a lot more corporatised—and I have become old. So I now have an old person’s tendency to say, Oh, things were such fun / so much better when we were young. Having said which, I do believe I have been very lucky to have worked with some exceptional people at a time when publishing was more random.
I am not sure whether I was always this person, and publishing sealed it—or whether publishing changed me—but both in my personal and professional lives, I am very schedule bound. I make excel sheets for every dinner I host and for every book I publish. I like knowing that on 6 December 2024, my books for February 2025 will go to press. (I am an old person!)
My view of children’s publishing has not changed in some ways—I still believe my audience is way smarter than I am (which no adult editor can say), and I believe that kids need entertaining books, not things that teach them. But it has changed in others—I am more tolerant of the terrible books that are published—because now, unlike twenty years back, there are a lot of books being published. And every child needs choices and the freedom to read terrible books.
RC: What kind of writing for children do you dislike? And what do you like?
To ask a question that many of my young readers ask me: What’s your favourite book?
I dislike writing that talks down to children, and writing that is boring and unambitious.
I like humour and I like ambition in plots and characters. I like unpredictable and experimental.
My favourite book is probably Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (and no, I did not like the TV version). My favourite book that I have published is Anushka Ravishankar’s Moin and the Monster. It is as silly and funny as Podi Pishir Bormi Baksho.
RC: There was a time when books for boys were different from books for girls. How true is that today? Would you choose the same for boys and girls?
Absolutely the same. I don’t think there is gender in reading—just genre interests. And we all experiment across genres once in a while.
RC: What do you think of the new trend of children writing for children?
SB: It is a free world.
So I don’t think kids should get special grace because they happen to be children. One should read a manuscript not keeping the author’s age in mind. If the manuscript works, great. If it does not, I am not sure it deserves special concession because it is written by a child.
The one exception I would make to that is narrative non-fiction, where a child who has some unique experience and has written well about that needs special consideration because it is a child who has had that experience. But of course, it still has to be well-written.
The only child author I have published was in ignorance. It was not until we asked for her bank details after making the contract that we realised that she was sixteen. We then had to redo the contract with her guardian because a sixteen-year-old cannot sign contracts.
RC: After a distinguished career with Puffin, Scholastic, and Amar Chitra Katha, you set up Duckbill with Anushka Ravishankar. That must have been a very different journey. What inspired you to strike out on your own? What were the challenges you faced, and the rewards?
SB: I am not sure how distinguished the career was, but yes, I did work in nice big set ups until Anushka and I started off as a two-person publishing house. What inspired us to start out was this: When you work for a large publishing house, you have financial targets. To meet those financial targets, there will be any number of well-wishers within the company who say that you must stick to things that sell well. In the case of Scholastic, for example, we had to do a certain amount of activity books or learning books, because that was what allegedly the school market demanded.
Anushka and I often talked about how we were convinced that one could survive as a publishing house doing only books that one wanted to publish. After having talked about this for several years, we felt we had to try it.
RC: Duckbill grew to be one of the most popular children’s publishing houses in India. That must have felt tremendously wonderful. How did you choose your authors, decide what kind of books to publish? Did you consider publishing translations of children’s literature?
SB: We picked authors only on the basis of stories and writing and ideas we really liked. We did not really have publishing targets, so we could be picky (as long as we survived!). And yes, there were years we published little because we had not very much money, but we still managed to make enough money to survive and publish more.
We were clear about things we would not publish (though we did break those rules since they were our rules!): mythology, folk tales, picture books, translations, talking animals. The first four were because there were other publishing houses which were doing a brilliant job of these categories. The fifth was because talking animals are by and large annoying because they are usually anthropomorphic.
We wanted to focus on segments where we felt there was not enough being published—simply because we believed children need choice (well, all human beings do!). So more science fiction, fantasy, humour, books about difficult subjects.
RC: How important is it to promote a book and how important, especially, is it for children’s books?
SB: Children’s books have a different pattern of sales from adult books. If an adult book does not sell in the first six months, it is very unlikely it will become a bestseller. For children’s books, you have to look at Year 3. In the absence of good review spaces which treat children’s books seriously, ample display space in bookshops, antiquated school library systems where it is impossible for librarians to get information—it takes that much time for a book to work its way through the system.
So yes, marketing is important but we do not seem to be still reaching the right spaces and having the right kind of critical engagement. So it is all a bit hit or miss.
RC: Duckbill is now an imprint of PRH—how does that transition feel, moving back to being part of a large publishing house after years of running a unique and very successful indie publishing venture?
SB: I am utterly delighted not to have to do GST payments any more or worry about stock. But I really miss the kind of intense engagement with ideas and writing that Anushka, Ayushi and I shared. And the kind of fun that the three of us—and Ashish, our one and only salesperson—had at bookfairs and so on. It was a very happy time indeed!
Now I sit at home and read manuscripts and edit. Which is what I like doing most in the whole process, so it is lovely. And there is a large and competent sales and marketing team doing lovely things, and someone else does the GST filings. So that is good.
But I really miss working with Anushka and Ayushi.
RC: We live in exciting times as far as technology is concerned, and especially so in the world of publishing. There are so many ways to deliver stories to children —multimedia channels like Youtube, ebooks, web-based initiatives like Pratham’s StoryWeaver… What has been the impact of these and similar channels on children’s books? Are books now being created differently to thirty years ago? Presented differently? Marketed differently? Has any of this affected children’s reading habits—how much they read, how they read, what they read, even when they read?
SB: I think (because I am old, see above!), that each medium needs its own kind of creativity. So as long as one has one primary medium in mind, all is good. I think a problem arises when we half-bakedly try to transition the same story format across different mediums. So for example, books trying forcibly to be more interactive because kids are used to interactive things on screens, is a bad thing.
I do not believe all kids have to read. Many children and adults lead perfectly happy, successful and healthy lives without having ever read a book for pleasure. And the insistence on reading as self-improvement I feel drives kids away from books. So I really am not particularly fussed if kids do not read.
Having said which, I feel that kids read a lot more online than I do (old person, see above). I have one sample child to study at home, and it seems to have read several books I have not seen in physical format. So clearly the reading is happening online at strange times that I am not aware of.
RC: We now also have generative AI. How are applications like ChatGPT and Dall-e impacting the writing and creation of children’s books? Are writers and illustrators working differently because of these tools? Is there a fear of redundancy amongst them? Do you believe that AI will one day replace human writers and illustrators?
SB: I do believe that AI will one day replace human writers and illustrators for certain kinds of books. And that may not be a bad thing, given the poor quality of some of these.
I do not believe AI will have much impact on most writers of creative fiction and narrative non-fiction. Here, it is the quirks, the unevenness, the randomness which gives the writers their charm and desirability.
Apparently, publishers are already receiving manuscripts saying Idea by Author, Text by ChatGPT. What fun!
RC: You’ve been in children’s publishing for almost 25 years. Did you ever feel the urge to write yourself? If you were to write, what kind of book(s) would you write?
SB: Rohini, I am upset and offended. I have written all of 2.33 books in my own name. (There are a couple of others I have ghost written, so they are under famous-author names!) But I write only when there is an exigency.
Since you are unaware of my distinguished writing career, I feel I shall now abjure the art.
But if I were to write, I would want to write historical rom-com/detective novels, because that is what I love reading.
RC: And as always, Sayoni Basu leaves me laughing and lost for words! Thank you, my friend, for your time, your insights, and your infinite patience! We look forward to many more wonderful books from you.
Here is Sayoni again, living her best life as an indie publisher…
Did you enjoy this conversation? Do write in with comments and questions. It is pleasure to here from you.
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Sayoni Basu is a delight. Thank you for this interview. I am now starting my day with a chuckle and appreciation for her wonderful work as both editor and publisher. To me she is perennially young. But then I'm older. :D