About Westland Ltd:

westland limited is a growing Indian trade publishing and distribution house, which includes EastWest Books and the new Tranquebar Press. westland publishes general trade books: our list of titles includes books on popular fiction, food and cooking, spirituality and self-help, health and wellness, history and architecture, general reference, travel and a host of other subjects. The group has several decades of experience in book retail and distribution, and to move into publishing was a natural transition. With an enthusiastic team of experienced editors and designers based in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi, westland limited is one of the few publishing houses in India to bring both the north and the south together. The latest offerings from westland include Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul, a series launched on 10 May 2008, the rip-roaring Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions by debut author Smita Jain, best-selling author Tuhin A. Sinha’s 22 Yards, the recently launched The 24 x 7 Marriage: Smart Strategies For New Beginnings by Vijay Nagaswami, the first in a series on ‘The New Indian Marriage’ ,Tishani Doshi’s latest collection of poems titled Countries of the Body, (Un)settled: Notes from a Shifting Life by Kamini Karlekar, and The Loudest Firecracker, a novel by noted blogger Arun Krishnan.

 

Corporate background:

Formed through the merger of EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt Ltd and Westland Books Pvt. Ltd, the companies have over 60 years of experience in the publishing and distribution business. westland ltd distributes for all major UK, US, and Indian publishers including Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, Dover, Canongate, Grove Atlantic, Perseus Egmont, Pan Macmillan and many others. The company pioneered the implementation of the long-tail concept in distribution. westland is the publishing and distribution arm of Landmark Ltd, the company that runs the Landmark chain of bookstores. Landmark is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trent Ltd, a Tata enterprise.

 

Tranquebar Press:

Tranquebar gets its name from the tiny, beautiful coastal former Danish settlement (now called Tharangambadi) in Tamil Nadu where Indian publishing and printing actually began. In 1706, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, a young Dutch Protestant missionary, arrived in Tranquebar; he learned Tamil from one of his assistants, who drew the letters on the beach using a stick. By 1716, Ziegenbalg had got a printing press up and running—with Tamil as well as English type. He printed a few tracts in English, a Portuguese-English ABC primer—and the first version of the New Testament in Tamil. Printing spread from Tranquebar to the rest of India, thanks to Ziegenbalg’s insistence on using the local language and his determination that the technology should be shared. In its first year, Tranquebar Press plans to publish a wide range of fiction and non-fiction. Our emphasis is on new writing and experimental work of high literary standards in any genre. Our list of authors includes Jeet Thayil, Saeed Mirza, Samit Basu, Ruchir Joshi, Daljit Nagra, Susan Mridula Koshy, Arun Krishnan, Tishani Doshi and many more.

EastWest Books:

This venerable Chennai publishing house was known as an academic publisher until the 1980s, when EastWest began its foray into literary publishing. The imprint was the first to publish works by Mahesh Dattani, Paul Zachariah and Esther David, among other writers, and was one of the first publishing houses in India to take a serious interest in translations and in Dalit writing. EastWest also ran the Indian Review of Books. Today, it specialises in books with a focus on south India—from literature to travelogues to local histories.