 Watership Down was rejected seven times before it was accepted by Rex Collings . The one @-@ man London publisher Collings wrote to an associate , " I 've just taken on a novel about rabbits , one of them with extra @-@ sensory perception . Do you think I 'm mad ? " The associate did call it " a mad risk " in her obituary of Collings ; " a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers ; but it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive . " Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but " he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered . " Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave Watership Down its title . There was a second edition in 1973 . 
