Giovanni Francesio will today take over editorial responsibility for Italian Fiction at the Mondadori publishing house, reporting directly to the editorial director Francesco Anzelmo.

In addition to Italian fiction, the other areas that report to Anzelmo are Foreign Fiction and Young Adults, Non Fiction, Miscellaneous, Paperbacks and Classics.

Born in Mantua in 1970, Giovanni Francesio graduated from the University of Bologna with a dissertation on Leopardi and Tasso.
He began his publishing career at Piemme in 2004 as editorial director, subsequently covering other roles in the company, including general manager.
From 2012 to 2014 he was editorial director of Piemme and Sperling & Kupfer, while, from 2015 to 2018 Francesio has been editorial director of Frassinelli, a position that will be given ad interim to Stefano Peccatori, general manager of Sperling & Kupfer, Piemme and Mondadori Electa.

“C’è vita, in un libro. La tua” (There’s life in a book, yours) is the claim of a new book promotion campaign by Mondadori Store, the Mondadori Group’s chain of bookshops, and the fruit of an idea by the artist Mr. SaveTheWall with the creative contribution from the Action & Branding agency.

The initiative, which launches on 15 November, aims to enhance the reading experience through the voices and faces of readers: in other words real people who have taken part in an experimental artistic operation called Bookshot and who are the protagonists of the campaign by offering an unmediated account of their feelings and bring books to life in their own words.

“The result of this creative project is a form of communication that comes from and goes to the heart, because sharing a book is to share a part of your life,” declared Francesco Riganti, marketing director of Mondadori Retail. “Mondadori Store is making itself a spokesman and promoter of a message of social interest: an invitation to read, because we believe that more readers can lead to a more solid society that is focused on development and change.”

During two shooting sessions at the Mondadori Megastore in Via Marghera in Milan, Mr. SaveTheWall, aka Pierpaolo Perretta, the artist known for his situationist work that interprets issues and habits of contemporary society, met one hundred people. Each participant was asked to bring their favourite book with them and what emerged were  profound stories and feelings provoked by reading. Each of which was captured on video and fixed in a photographic portrait.

“An adage that I have made my own is ‘art is in the eye of the beholder’. And in Bookshot, as a work of art, I was able to note that the participants made the books the had read their own and created a  unique reading experience. The authenticity of the feelings of the participants is in itself something quite extraordinary especially if we consider that from a dialogue based on a single object – their favourite book – they were able to draw out a more profound and real synthesis of their life. This is why, for me, Bookshot is such an authentic, powerful and engaging project,” commented the artist Mr. SaveTheWall.

So readers are the exceptional witnesses to an initiative that will take place in the coming months on the web on a site dedicated to the project www.condividiunlibro.it, which will host he videos and photos produced by the artist. Users will be invited to take part by posting on Facebook or Instagram Stories their favourite book and a phrase the briefly explains why it is their favourite and using the hashtag #condividiunlibro. Alls of this content will be added to the platform, multiplying the sharing of experiences and will be rewarded by Mr. SaveTheWall who will choose the best shots.

“This is an ambitious and extremely valuable project that we are very proud of. A sort of perfect alchemy has been created among the people involved and this has enabled the idea to gather enthusiasm day by day and reach out to all of the touchpoints. The genesis itself of the creative idea was the result of collective intelligence working in harmony, a relationship model that can be taken as an example and that will increasingly find a place in the future.” concluded Alessandro Pedrazzini, CEO of Action & Branding.

The campaign will also benefit form articulated planning across different media and managed by MediaClub: press, with four subjects, on leading weekly and monthly titles and the Mondadori Store Christmas Gift Guide; the web and the social networks Facebook, Instagram and Youtube with di 30’’ and 60’’ videos; leading influencer networks; outdoor metropolitan digital posts, at metro, bus and train stations; and all of the shops on the Mondadori Store network and on Mondadoristore.it.

Dio è giovane (God is Young) is the title of the new book-long interview with Pope Francis that will be published with a big international launch on 20 March 2018. Two years after Il nome di Dio è Misericordia (The Name of God is Mercy), which was published in over 100 countries, an important new publishing project characterises the papacy of Pope Francis: the Holy Father has dedicated 2018 to the young generations, ahead of the Youth Synod to be held at the Vatican in October. Dio è giovane will be published around the world on the occasion of the World Youth Day which, falling on Palm Sunday, will be celebrated in the Vatican and in dioceses in the five continents.
The Pope wanted to handwrite the title of the book on the covers of the six main languages.
In Italy it will be published by Piemme, a publishing house of the Mondadori Group, which manages the worldwide rights.
The book can already be pre-ordered from online stores.

Pope Francis
Dio è giovane (God is Young)
A conversation with Thomas Leoncini

In a book form interview, Pope Francis addresses young people all over the world, both inside and outside the Church, in a courageous, intimate, memorable dialogue. A message of liberation that crosses the present and outlines the future, building a bridge between generations for a profound renewal of our societies. In conversation with Thomas Leoncini, Pope Francis, with great force and passion, analyses the great issues of modernity, taking the new generations, the great overlooked of our restless age, away from the margins to which they have been relegated and showing that they are, in fact, the protagonists of our common story. The book anticipates and prepares the great Youth Synod that will be celebrated in the Vatican in October 2018.

The following publishers are involved in the launch of the book in Europe, the United States and Latin America:

Italy                                       Piemme
USA & Canada                      Random House
France                                   Robert Laffont
Germany                               Herder
Spain & South America     Editorial Planeta
Portugal                                Planeta Manuscrito
Brazil                                     Editora Planeta
Poland                                   Znak
Croatia                                   Verbum
Slovakia                                Fortuna Libri
Slovenia                                Druzina
Czech Republic                   Omega  
 

Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio)
Born in Buenos Aires on 17 December 1936, since 13 March 2013 he has been the Bishop of Rome and the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
On 13 March 2015 he decided to mark his pontificate by indicating a Holy Year of Mercy. On that occasion he published the international bestseller Il nome di Dio è Misericordia (The Name of God is Mercy): A conversation with Andrea Tornielli (2016). On 6 October 2016, he called the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the issue of “Youth, faith and vocational discernment”, which will be held in the Vatican from 3 to 28 October 2018, putting the issue of young people at the centre of its pastoral action and teaching.

Thomas Leoncini was born in 1985. A journalist and writer, engaged in the study of psychological and social models, he conversed with Zygmunt Bauman for Born Liquid (Sperling & Kupfer, 2017), the last work of the great sociologist who died and has been translated into 12 languages.

In order to address the challenges of the book market in a more effective and innovative manner – a market deemed both crucial and strategic for its development – today the Mondadori Group has adopted a new organizational structure hinged on a single business area covering the whole range of book activities, from the trade area to school textbooks, from illustrated books and international publications to art and exhibitions.

Forecasts on the book business show that overall revenue in 2017 will top the 500 million euro mark, with profitability in excess of 14%.

The new structure, which has already been adopted by the main players also on the international level, is implemented two years after the heavy investments made in the acquisition of Rcs Libri and represents the starting point of a new phase: the Mondadori Group aims in fact not only to strengthen its leadership in its segments of operation, but also to seize every opportunity for growth on the domestic and foreign markets.

This strategic goal is based on the remarkable results achieved by Books over the past few years, thanks to the people who serve the Group with their outstanding professional qualities, dedication and love for books.

Head of the new area is Antonio Porro, who has also been appointed Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Mondadori Libri S.p.A., a company chaired by Ernesto Mauri, CEO of the Group.

Enrico Selva Coddè, current Managing Director of Mondadori Libri S.p.A., for the Trade area, in his areas of responsibility, now adds the Electa activities for the Books area, the General Manager of which is Stefano Peccatori, who has also been appointed manager of the Sperling&Kupfer and Piemme publishers.

Enrico Selva Coddè remains at the helm of Mondadori, Einaudi, Rizzoli and the Children’s Business Unit, in the traditional policy of competitiveness and clear-cut identity and total independence of each publishing brand.

Still reporting to Antonio Porro: Aaron Buttarelli, General Manager Mondadori Education, Publishing area; Danilo Galimberti, General Manager Mondadori Education, Sales area; Giovanni Bonfanti, General Manager Rizzoli Education; Rosanna Cappelli, General Manager Art, Exhibitions, Electa Museums; Marco Ausenda, Managing Director Rizzoli International Publication.

Gian Arturo Ferrari will continue to offer his publishing advice to the new Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Mondadori Libri S.p.A., Antonio Porro.

On February 13, Rizzoli publishes “Fire and Fury”, the publishing phenomenon of this beginning of the year.

The book, which was released in the USA on January 5 and initially sold in 150,000 copies, has already reached 1.1 million paper copies sold out – with readers queuing up at night in front of bookshops as in Harry Potter’s day – as well as hundreds of thousands of copies in ebooks and the audio version.

In England, in just a few days and even before its arrival in the bookshop on January 10, the print run reached 400,000 copies and there are already more than 20 countries that have acquired publishing rights. In France the volume, as announced today by Le Figaro, will be released on February 22nd for Laffont.

Lies? It’s all true,”says Wolff, who initially imagined the book as an account of the first 100 days at the White House to be published one year after the beginning of Trump’s presidency and then, unexpectedly, had access to the President and most senior members of his staff, including Steve Bannon, for a total of 18 months (the first interview took place in May 2016), becoming a” constant intruder “.

Michael Wolff, 64, an American author, essayist, and journalist, and a regular columnist and contributor to USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and the UK edition of GQ, has already stirred up a sensation with a biography on Rupert Murdoch (2007, The Man Who Owns the News).

After Grey‘s success, E L James returns to the bookshop with Darker, the events of Fifty Shades told from Christian Grey’s point of view. A deeper and darker version of the love story that has fascinated millions of readers worldwide, published in Italy by Mondadori.

Plot

Their scorching, sensual affair ended in heartbreak and recrimination, but Christian Grey cannot get Anastasia Steele out of his mind, or his blood. Determined to win her back, he tries to suppress his darkest desires and his need for complete control, and to love Ana on her own terms.

But the horrors of his childhood still haunt him, and Ana’s scheming boss, Jack Hyde, clearly wants her for himself.  Can Christian’s confidant and therapist, Dr. Flynn, help him face down his demons? Or will the possessiveness of Elena, his seducer, and the deranged devotion of Leila, his former submissive, drag Christian down into the past?

And if Christian does win Ana back, can a man so dark and damaged ever hope to keep her?

Rizzoli Hires Eccles Fisher Associates

With effect from August 1st, Rizzoli, BUR and Fabbri Editori in Italy have appointed Eccles Fisher Associates as their UK scout

Founded in 1983, Eccles Fisher Associates Ltd is a literary scouting agency working on behalf of publishers from eighteen countries and a film and T.V. company

www.ecclesfisher.com

On Thursday 6 July, in the captivating space of the Ninfeo of the Villa Giulia in Rome, Paolo Cognetti won the 71^st Premio Strega with his nove Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains). The author, who also won the 4^th edition of the Premio Strega Giovani 2017, an award for young writers, clearly moved and delighted by this prestigious recognition, dedicated the prize to the mountains, “because it’s an area that has been abandoned, forgotten and destroyed, often by the city, and I decided that I wanted to write about that. I have tried to be a sort of spokesman, a go-between, for the mountains, the plain and the city, that all seem very far away. I also try to write these stories for people who don’t know the mountains and live too far away from them, trying, in some way, to save the world I live in.”  “Being here,” he added, “is like a dream come true, not so much a dream of winning a prize, as being a writer and being able to live on my work.”

From the beginning, Le otto montagne has been a literary phenomenon, something that was made clear by the competition among the publishers who wanted to publish it around the world. In fact, the novel has already been translated into more than 30 languages.

Le otto montagne tells the story of Pietro, a solitary and somewhat argumentative city boy, and his relationship with his parents, his friend Bruno and, above all, with the mountains. From the stage of the Strega prize the author reminded the audience that nature is a word used by people who live in cities.”

In their lean, hard and wild beauty, the mountains leave a permanent mark on the soul, an imprint on those who are born there and those who love them. It becomes a category of the spirit, and even when one leaves, in search of a more comfortable and easier place, you can never really break away. All it takes is a sound, a smell, and you are sucked straight back in. This is what happens to the characters in the novel. They just can’t manage without, the come and go, but never really leave.

It is a story of “fathers and sons, of abandoning civilisations, of the freedom of living wild. I have always kept with me the memory of the great happiness I experienced as a boy in the woods. Whatever destiny is, it lives in the mountains we have above our heads.” (Paolo Cognetti).

Don’t trust a surface that is too calm: you never know what it conceals. With the same narrative force that has captured millions of readers around the world with The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins gives us a multifaceted novel that is rich in emotions. When the river of a small town gives up the bodies, within a few weeks of each other, of a single mother and her teenage daughter, what also comes to the surface is a much more complicated and surprising affair than expected. As in The Girl on the Train, INTO THE WATER  comes from a deep and powerful understanding of human instincts and the damage they can cause.

“INTO THE WATER offers surprises on every page,” said the American editor Sarah McGrath. “As in The Girl on the Train, also here the murders are part of a bigger story. INTO THE WATER shows us what the tricks of memory can do and the ways in which the past creeps dangerously into the present and the future.”

“Once again Paula explores the fascinating depths of our mind,” says the British editor Sarah Adams, “reminding us that things are rarely as they seem, and prompting us to investigate the reality around us.”

“An original and courageous book,” said Paula Hawkins’ agent, Lizzy Kremer.

The novel will be published in the United States and in Great Britain on 2 May 2017.

Paula Hawkins is the author of the worldwide bestseller The Girl on the Train, which has sold over 18 million copies around the world. The novel spent 79 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and more than three months in the number one spot. In Italy it has sold over 600,000 copies, and has never left the bestsellers list since it was published in June 2015, and remains in the top ten best-selling books. The Girl on the Train was recently adapted for the cinema starring Emily Blunt.

Mondadori Libri is proud to announce the publication – simultaneously around the world – of the autobiography by Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run, on 27 September 2016. It will be preceded by the album Chapter and Verse, released by Columbia Records/Sony Music, on 23 September.

Mondadori Store is celebrating this double bonanza with an unmissable competition, organised in collaboration with Sony Music Italy and Mondadori Libri, with as the prize Fender Telecaster American Standard guitar, tested and signed by Bruce Springsteen. For full details please go to eventi.mondadoristore.it.

Finally, to celebrate along with all Bruce Springsteen fans the arrival of the autobiography, Born to Run, and the album, Chapter and Verse, 5 events are planned in Milan, Rome, Bologna, Padua e Turin, with exceptional guest appearances, shows and lots of music. For full details please go to librimondadori.it.

The autobiography Born to Run

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl: the experience was so exciting that Bruce decided to put it down on paper. This was how the extraordinary autobiography started, a book that Bruce has spent the past seven years preparing and in which we rediscover the sincerity, the irony and originality that we have come to know through his songs.

He tells us about his childhood in Freehold, New Jersey, a place full of poetry but also of potential risks, destined to feed his imagination, until the moment that Bruce calls the “Big Bang”: Elvis Presley’s debut on the “Ed Sullivan Show”. He describes his unbridled desire to become a musician, his beginnings as the king of the bar bands in Asbury Park and the birth of the E Street Band. With disarming candour, for the first time Bruce Springsteen talks about the inner torments that inspired his greatest songs, beginning from Born to Run, a track that turns out to be even more complex than we imagined.

It is an enlightening read for anyone who loves Bruce Springsteen, but it is much more that the memoir of a legendary rock star: it is a book for practical spirits and incurable dreamers, for parents and children, couples in love and lonely hearts, for artists, hippies and anyone who wants to be baptized in the sacred river of rock. It is rare that an artist tells their story in such an intensely detailed way. As in many of his songs (Thunder Road, Badlands, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, Born in the USA, The Rising and The Ghost of Tom Joad, to name just a few), the autobiography of Bruce Springsteen outlines the inspiration of a unique artist and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his own experience.

The album Chapter and Verse

Chapter and Verse, is the album that accompanies the autobiography, released on 23 September by Columbia Records/Sony Music four-days ahead of the publication of Born to Run. The collection, which spans the artist’s entire career, includes six songs that have never been heard before. It is available on CD, double LP, digital download and streaming. The CD and double LP contain the lyrics of the songs and some rare photos.

The songs on in Chapter and Verse, 18 in total, reflect the themes and sections of the book Born to Run. The collection begins with two tracks by the Castiles, with the teenaged Springsteen on vocals and guitar, and closes with the title track from 2012’s “Wrecking Ball”. The track list of the album traces Bruce’s musical history, from its beginnings and tell a story that runs in parallel with the narrative of the book.

The recordings by the Steel Mill and the Bruce Springsteen Band feature musicians who would later enter the ranks of the E Street Band. The solo demos “Henry Boy” and “Growin’ Up” were made in 1972, shortly before Springsteen began recording his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.


The Mondadori Store competition

Mondadori Store, Italy’s most extensive chain of bookstores, in collaboration with Mondadori Libri and Sony Music Italy, has organised a competition for which the prize is a Fender Telecaster American Standard tested and signed by Bruce Springsteen himself. Fans can take part in the competition by pre-ordering or buying the book along with the CD or LP) exclusively at participating Mondadori Stores or on the web site mondadoristore.it,

All you have to do then is to got to the web site eventi.mondadoristore.it before 20 October 2016 and follow the instructions to participate in the draw. The prize will be presented to the fortunate winner along with a certificate of authenticity.

The guitar, on display from today at the Mondadori Megastore in Piazza Duomo, will also travel to the Mondadori Stores in Bologna, Padua and Turin as part of three events dedicated to Bruce Springsteen, and finally it will remain on show at the Mondadori Megastore in Piazza Duomo in Milan until the end of the competition.

For full details please go to eventi.mondadoristore.it.

The events

A total of 5 events have been organised to celebrate the publication of the autobiography Born to Run and the release of the album Chapter and Verse, starting with Eataly and two exceptional events. The first, in Milan, on Thursday 29 September at Eataly Smeraldo from 8 pm and the second in Rome, on Sunday 2 October at Eataly Ostiense from 6 pm. Two unique occasions, with special guests. At the heart of th event will be a reading from the autobiography Born to Run by the great Giuseppe Battiston. Taking part in Milan will be the journalist Marina Petrillo and I Rome Gino Castaldo.

But that’s not all, because from 3 to 6 October the Fender Telecaster American Standard signed by Bruce Springsteen will tour the Mondadori Stores in Bologna, Padua and Turin, where it will be on display for a whole day. In each city a special event dedicated to the autobiography Born to Run and the album Chapter and Verse, has been organised and the protagonists of these three events will be the comic actor Antonio Ornano, authors, artists and special fans. For full details. please go to librimondadori.it.