Watership Down publishers before Collings accepted it, it won the annual Carnegie Medal, annual Guardian Prize, and other book awards. It was adapted into an animated feature film in 1978, and later a television series which ran from 1999 to 2001. Later, a miniseries of the story was made and aired in the UK in 2018. Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, "Tales from Watership Down" (Random House, 1996; Hutchinson and Alfred A. Knopf imprints). It is a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren, with "Notes on Pronunciation" and "Lapine Glossary".
Watership Down obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "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. Macmillan USA, then a media giant, published the first U.S. edition in 1974 and a Dutch edition was also published that year by Het Spectrum.