Sage joins hands with local publishers to form new imprints

Independent academic publisher SAGE, in its 50th year, has joined hands with strong independent publishers in India to form new imprints, and to augment a commitment towards long-term publishing. After announcing an imprint with Yoda Press recently, the company has now signed an agreement with publishers Bhatkal and Sen and Popular Prakashan.

07 Sep 2015 | By Dibyajyoti Sarma

With Bhatkal and Sen (a publishing partnership between Mandira Sen and Harsha Bhatkal), SAGE will form two new imprints, SAGE Stree and SAGE Samya. Both Stree and Samya publish academic works in social sciences, memoirs and classic fiction in translation in English and Bengali. This partnership would benefit both publishing houses by furthering the list in the social sciences and would be in sync with SAGE’s traditional publishing focus in the academic realm.

Vivek Mehra, MD and CEO, SAGE India, and Mandira Sen and Harsha Bhatkal, directors, Bhatkal and Sen (of Stree and Samya), signed the agreement in a meeting held in New Delhi recently.

“We at SAGE have always believed in growing our author base. This is the third partnership in our mission to grow passionate publishing. We look forward to working with Stree and Samya,” said Mehra. “SAGE is known for its commitment to quality and innovation and our association with Stree and Samya will only help us in this endeavour.”

Sen said, “Our strengths are drawn from the heritage of independent publishers in India, encompassing both regional and all-India concerns, and we are proud that the new entities SAGE Stree and SAGE Samya will receive the support to carry this forward, helping us reach a wider discerning readership than we could earlier imagine. This will only augment our long-term commitment towards publishing landmark titles in the social sciences and create an outstanding list of perennial influence.”

Meanwhile, SAGE is collaborating with Popular Prakashan to expand its already exhaustive list in the social sciences. Mehra and Harsha Bhatkal, publisher, Popular Prakashan, laid the cornerstone of the new imprint by signing an agreement in New Delhi recently.

“We are looking forward to working with SAGE. I have always believed that in order to enter newer markets it is essential to tie-up with big publishing houses, such as SAGE that has a global presence. We look forward to growing this partnership,” Bhatkal said.

Mehra added, “This association will help in contributing towards sustainable responsible development of our respective publishing houses. Popular Prakashan is a well-respected social science publisher with a stable of path-breaking authors. SAGE is a world leader in its chosen academic, educational, and professional markets. This is a match that is meant to be.”

SAGE is an independent international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media. Known for its commitment to quality and innovation, SAGE is a world leader in its chosen scholarly, educational, and professional markets.

Stree (gender studies) and Samya (cultural and dalit studies) are two imprints of Bhatkal and Sen, a joint partnership founded by Ramdas Bhatkal and Harsha Bhatkal of Popular Prakashan, Mumbai, and Mandira Sen of Kolkata in 1990. Stree and Samya have over a 100 titles contributing towards scholarship in the social sciences.

Popular Prakashan was founded in 1926 by GR Bhatkal. With a publishing list of over 4,000 titles on different subjects and in varied languages, it remains unrivalled in various domains, be it the social sciences list or the Marathi line-up of literary works.