Among all the branches of modern marketing, the most complex and controversial is undoubtedly the “editorial marketing”. I’m talking about the Italian situation which, as usual, is anomalous. Because here, in the face of the crisis, a considerable part of publishers have chosen to adopt a strategy that would be more appropriate for printers, while major they clumsily try to imitate the marketing of consumer goods, in the crazy dream of turning the book into something similar. And there are those who are rebelling against this system. There is between the two extremes a heroic group of small and medium-sized publishing houses of great quality that have to bend over backwards to sustain a market where the raw material is lacking: the readers.
But there are also exceptions, and I will mention one in this regard case histories (again to use marketing language) which, like it or not, is changing the rules of the discipline, if it ever existed. We must immediately warn that these “new rules” are inapplicable for anyone, because they arise from the ingenuity and intuition of a single man and could hardly, very hardly, be adopted by any of the majorincapable as they are of taking risks and getting involved by investing in the new and the “outside the series”.
Who am I talking about? From Giulio Mozzi, a highly skilled editor (one of the best in Italy I will say so as not to offend anyone, as is customary in the industry, otherwise the others will get offended and the environment will murmur) with a hard-earned career behind him rewarded by great results , the last of which are sensational. And I’m talking about the necklace Fremenby Laurana Editore, which since it was inaugurated by Mozzi has become a launch platform for editorial cases: Mexican Railways by Gian Marco Griffi, The home of the white orphans by Fiammetta Palpati, and the very recent The splendor by Paolo Di Mino.
Every shot a notch one would say if Mozzi were a character from a western film: never makes mistakes. It is true that those “out of format” novels would never have found a place in the series of publishing houses that I define as “marketing disoriented”, and this is demonstrated, for example, by the well seven years of waste received from Palpati’s novel, whose fortunes were overturned by that great green thumb of Mozzi, who presumably also overturned the novel. But this is proof that the editors of many publishing houses no longer see beyond their noses, caught as they are between the anguish of the publisher and the impossible conquest of the “weak reader”, the one who wouldn’t read a book even if they shot it at him. It is in the small space of action between these two extremes that editorial marketing plays.
What is Mozzi’s secret? A huge job background to which the Bottega di Narrazione contributes, a school that year after year is offering some of the best writing courses in Italy. And I say this as a teacher. Indeed, I will make a public confession with which I risk risking my friendship with Mozzi, but I am a sincere person: I confess that I myself signed up to his workshop to steal who knows what teaching secrets and, perhaps, use them in one of my courses, albeit in other areas. But I eventually discovered that there was no secret if not hard work under good guidance. A painstaking job that obviously does not exclude the natural selection that all aspiring writers must accept to undergo in order to escape amateurism. There are no shortcuts. If the selection has already taken place at shop level, the worst is already over.
Let’s be clear, in general my position towards schools creative writing it is very close to that of Alfio Squillaci, with the only difference that I still see some usefulness in it: 1) for publishers, that of being the first to discover potentially innovative products and bring them to the minimum standards of the sector, 2) for authors, that of learning to always compare, and 3) for the masses, that of keeping the practice of writing alive in the same way that readers’ clubs keep reading alive, in a country that is sinking into returning illiteracy. Where is the marketing here? It’s simple: Mozzi revives the figure of product manager which in publishing as well as in industry has already been swallowed up bysales office. Someone is scandalized because Mozzi is doing “even” the press office? And what is the problem? No one knows the product better than a product manager and can promote it, in the face of the infamous press offices of publishing houses, who haven’t even read the books they promote.
The truth is that Italian publishing arrived at marketing last, completely misunderstanding it discipline. And all this bogus marketing has fueled a bubble that’s about to burst at any moment. Just now that I had decided to move on to fiction. He says: but with these speeches you are not afraid of making enemies among those responsible for the fiction? Who cares, I’m an essayist. Just kidding, we’ll see each other again in fiction. And then, I love messing around with the marketing of publishing houses. Why they don’t understand anythingnothing marketing at all.
Featured photo taken from Giulio Mozzi’s fb profile
