Stefano Mauri. Image: Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri (UEM), Yuma Martellanz
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Family Sagas, ‘Just Old Enough To Be History’
When Giunti’s Leeann Bortolussi on Friday (July 12) introduced Publishing Perspectives readers to a new Bompiani release in our rights edition on Friday (June 12), some readers who know the Italian market may almost have been able to hear the likeliest “comp” being mentioned by Italian booksellers to consumers.
For those not familiar with the term in the English-language markets, a “comp” is a comparison title that’s similar in terms of content and expected sales.
“It’s like La portalettere (The Letter Carrier),” a bookseller in a libreria in Cortona today might be saying to a customer, reassuringly comparing Milena Palminteri’s Giunti debut Come l’arancio amaro (Like the Bitter Orange) to a release from Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol‘s (GeMS) publisher Casa Editrice Nord.
Francesca Giannone’s La portalettere was the bestselling debut novel of 2023 in the Italian market. And if the fortunes of the Giannone book—and of GeMS’ track record in debut fiction—can predict how the Palminteri book may fare, then Italians may soon be carrying around a book cover adorned with a time-kissed portrait of a formidable young woman.
Giannone’s La portalettere from GeMS’ Nord went on to earn its No. 1 standing with some 425,000 copies in all formats making it into the hands of readers. And its international translation and publication rights (and screen rights) so far are reported to have gone into at least 23 territories and languages, including:
- Albania: Botimet Living
- World Arabic: Al Arabi Publishing
- Brazil: LVM
- Croatia: HenaCom
- Czech Republic: Grada
- Denmark: Forlaget Grønningen 1
- World English: Crown Publishing
- Finland: WSOY
- France: Albin Michel
- Germany: btb/PRH
- Greece: Psichogios
- Lithuania: Alma Littera
- The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek
- North Macedonia: Antolog Books
- Poland: Znak
- Portugal: Presença
- Romania: Univers
- Russia: Alpina Publishers
- Serbia: Laguna
- Slovenia: HKZ
- World Spanish: Duomo Ediciones
- Turkey: Gutenberg/Inkilap
The proven GeMS-Nord book and the new Giunti-Bompiani book are both family sagas, debut publications by authors whose own lives have each included time in the region of her fiction—Giannone in Puglia’s Salento area and Palminteri in Salerno.
And an interesting parallel that Stefano Mauri points out is that they each are mining the rich storytelling treasures of what we might call an era “just old enough to be ‘history,’ as he puts it.
Indeed, in figures provided this morning to Publishing Perspectives (July 18) show a tight contest in play behind the authors and titles that seem to explicate the Italian market’s fiction interests of the moment so well.
GeMS’s Giannone is being listed as No. 2 among Italy’s bestsellers for her second book, Domani domani (Tomorrow, Tomorrow), released in June by Casa Editrice Nord. Also set in Salento, also about family, also set in the 20th century, the new work plays out in the 1950s and involves a brother and sister’s family bonds.- At No. 1 this week is Donatella di Pietrantonio 2024 Strega Prize-winner for L’Eta Fragile (The Fragile Age), a book published in Italy by Gruppo Mondadori’s Einaudi, and in Spain by GeMS. The title was released in June and focuses on a mother-daughter relationship, though not in the last century. In this case, the action takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- And behind the Piertrantonio and Giannone novels, the Palminteri Come l’arancio amaro is standing at No.3.
The 20th century (and maybe parts of the pandemic) may seem distant to many of us now, but is in many ways a part of the past not yet explored nearly as thoroughly in fiction as older times. So, Mauri says with that trademark twinkle in his eye, “There will be much to say about it.”
Big Services for Smaller Publishers
Stefano Mauri, no stranger to Publishing Perspectives readers, is president and CEO of Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol (GeMS), the publishing power created in 2005 in a merger that resulted in GeMS having 11 publishing houses and 20 imprints. As such, it’s Italy’s second-largest publishing entity, following Mondadori.
One of the keys to this conglomerate’s success, Mauri says, is that the publishers operating in the GeMS network are largely autonomous. They make their own calls, while using the shared capabilities the umbrella corporation offers.
Among those services is the distribution work of Emmelibri-Messaggerie, led by Alberto Ottieri. It’s this company, as you may recall, which in April established a controlling stake in the Libraccio Group of independent bookstores.
That deal was announced on June 24 to have been given the go-ahead by Italy’s competition authority AGCOM. As this was being reported last month, it was learned that Emmelibri-Messaggerie had reached €655 million (US$715 million) in consolidated turnover in 2023, its distribution operations encompassing more than 5,000 points of sale, 230,000 titles, and approximately 800 independent publishers.
Still, Mauri is clear on the fact that even the size of a major consortium of publishers like GeMS cannot ensure a trend. Something like the obvious affection many readers have for near-term historical fiction following the fortunes of families and generations can be destabilized by “what comes from authors worldwide,” he says. “Maybe a new trend will take part of the market.”
But having so many publishing houses and imprints operating under GeMS’ peninsula-long roof has meant that the corporation has seen a remarkable run of bestseller success in the debut-fiction sector since 2018.
Six Years (Almost) at the Top of Debut Fiction in Italy
Image: Gruppo editorial Mauri Spagnol
The heavyweight in GeMS’ run of fiction bestsellers in the market, of course, is Stefania Auci’s I leoni di Sicilia (The Florios: Sicily’s Lions). This is another GeMS bestseller that may be used this summer as a comp for Come l’arancio amaro. Auci’s novel towers over the field as 2019’s bestseller with 1,045,000 copies sold in all formats, and its Disney+ adaptation. The 2021 L’inverno dei Leoni (The Lions’ Winter) went on to sell 535,000 copies, itself.
The Florios’ saga is from an earlier time, the 18th and 19th centuries, but again argues for the durability in the Italian market (and many others) for historical family fiction.
That 2019 success, Mauri points out, was the one year that GeMS’ No. 1 fiction bestseller wasn’t quite a debut. Nevertheless, he says with a chuckle, “Auci’s previous novel was published by another imprint” outside the GeMS family, “which declined to publish I leoni. The other publisher’s Auci book had sold fewer than 3,000 copies, he says.
“Whereas I leoni with us has sold more than 1,045,000 copies with us so far,” Mauri says.
“We cannot say, then, that in the past six years we have had every No. 1 bestselling debut novel.” Another smile. “But almost.”
And when the Guest of Honor Italy program arrives at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20), Mauri says, there may be as many as seven authors from the GeMS houses in the writers’ delegation, including Auci, the writer behind those Sicilian lions:
- Elisabetta Gnone of Adriano Salani Editore
- Claudio Magris of Garzanti
- Cristina Caboni of Garzanti
- Helena Janeczek of Guanda
- Erin Doom of Magazzini Salani
- Felicia Kingsley of Newton Compton
- Stefania Auci of Casa Editrice Nord
‘A Boutique Dimension’
In an interview about the way the GeMS conglomerate has managed to dominate debut fiction for years, what Mauri mentions is the fact that the company is made up of small- and medium-sized publishers and their imprints.
“I think our peculiar situation,” he says, of such success in this proud area of the Italian fiction market, “is because when I started in publishing, I had the luck of learning the craft of this business in relatively small divisions. That means that we grew year by year. And not by building one big imprint but by developing or re-launching small and medium imprints.
“And so, on the on the scouting and editing and publishing side, we kept a boutique dimension on our activity.
“These are 20 small and medium imprints, but when we are facing the trade, we’re one large group. So with printers, booksellers, agents, we are one.
“And yet, when it comes to our work on the editorial side,” he says, “we have 20 different directors” in 20 different storytelling companies. And if anything, Mauri says, that mix—which some on the outside might be tempted to mistake as fragmented—has meant both “a spectrum of curiosity” and taste, but also a type of strength in flexibility.
Instead of one united aesthetic and leadership, this hive of creative companies, Mauri says, has been able to flourish through the demands of the pandemic, a recession, and an emergence of “new tastes especially from younger readers” that might have thrown a more monolithic company.
“This structure,” with the supple strength of a stand of bamboo, “is more flexible,” he says, “able to adapt to these new influences. And some of these imprints—not all of them—have been very quick to detect a new taste,” counting on the GeMS parent company’s support in promotion, marketing, distribution, and other support mechanisms.
‘Learning Something From Everything’
So it is that among those guest of honor program authors headed from GeMS to Germany in October will be Erin Doom, the pen name of an author whose new-adult Fabbricante di lacrime brought to prominence a Wattpad writer making the leap into professional publishing. Her identity would be a secret in 2021 when her book was published by GeMS’ Magazzini Salani—that debut is now known as The Tearsmith to many who have discovered it as director Allesadro Genovesi’s Netflix adaptation, released in April.
As Nick Vivarelli reported at Variety on April 22, The Tearsmith became the first No. 1 film from Italy in Netflix’s international rankings
At 690,000 copies, Doom’s book—she now has revealed her identity as “Matilde” since Publishing Perspectives first met her—has made her one of the most successful fiction writers in Italy, the No. 1 bestseller in 2022 with international rights sales into 36 countries.
She’s been met with a rapturous reception by fans this spring at the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, the Torino International Book Fair that ran May 9 to 13.
“Every imprint has its own director,” Mauri says, in the big tent of GeMS he helms. But that director will share many aspects of the work with sister imprints and publishers under the broad reach of Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol, leaving “more time to concentrate on the editorial aspect.” And it’s to that he credits this run of so many bestsellers under his company’s aegis.
From his own viewpoint, Mauri knows to watch for the connections, and the differences, between what his many houses are doing, that growing tapestry of debut fiction chart-toppers for GeMS, among them:
- Finché il caffè è caldo by Toshikazu Kawaguchi from the house Garzanti with its imprints Corbaccio, Orville Press, and Chiarelettere (545,000 copies)
- La casa sull’argine by Daniela Raimondi from GeMS’ Casa Editrice Nord (135,000 copies)
- La biblioteca di Parigi by J. Skeslien Charles, another from Garzanti (77,000 copies)
- Quando le montagne cantano by Nguyen Phan Que Mai, another from Nord (150,000 copies)
- Eleanor Oliphant sta benissimo, the hit UK novel by Gail Honeyman, produced in translation at GeMS by Garzanti (280,000)
“Together, we have the largest variety of experiences and can react to different phenomena,” he says. “But we are always learning something from everything.”
That air of amusement familiar to those who knows Stefano Mauri catches up with him again as he thinks of a quaint way to describe the surprises of success: “Every peculiarity is useful.”
The GeMS-Magazzini Salani author of ‘The Tearsmith,’ Erin Doom, speaks at the 2024 Salone Internazionale del Libro Torino on May 11. Doom is expected to be a member of the authors’ delegation to Frankfurter Buchmesse for the Guest of Honor Italy program in October. Image: SILT
More on Italy and the Italian market is here, more on Guest of Honor Italy at Frankfurter Buchmesse this year is here, more from Publishing Perspectives on mergers and acquisitions is here, and more on Italy’s Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol (GeMS) consortium is here.
