September continues to be a magical month for us. We won…not one…but TWO Publishing Next Industry Awards.
We won awards for :
Printed Children’s Book of the Year (The Boy and the Drum)
Publishing Innovation of the Year (Donate-a-Book)
The Publishing Next Industry Awards were instituted in 2014 to reward the talent, initiative, entrepreneurial zeal and untiring efforts of publishers – big, small, independent – that create books. Established under the aegis of the neutral platform of the Publishing Next Conference, the awards seek to recognize innovation and leadership in the book trade.
‘The Boy and the Drum‘ won ‘for celebrating and subtly relaying the value of kindness in a child-friendly way, with charming illustrations, in a well-produced book that even educators can benefit from”. Written by an active theatreperson and theatre teacher, it is an introduction to a new way of ‘reading’ a book. This is our first published play, and in the Indian publishing scene, there are very few published plays. This book was also the chosen book for our ‘One Day, One Story’ campaign and was shared by 2500+ PBChamps across India and the world. Congrats Umesh P N and Rajeev Eipe for creating this lovely award-winning book!
Our crowdfunding platform Donate-a-Book won ‘for its ability to successfully leverage crowdsourcing and social media towards achieving its goal, as well as for an innovative initiative that demonstrates a commitment to children’s books, both in Indian languages and English. With ‘Donate-a-book’ we are creating access for critically needed reading resources that will help India’s children read. You can support our work here.
Within a few months of launching this platform and releasing this book, we’ve won awards. A big thank you to the folks at Publishing Next and the judges for encouraging our work. Many congratulations to all the other winners too!