th
# 69 • OCTOBER 5 , 2015
review of the New York Ti- players in the global publishing market - Tabucmes and The Republic.
chi’s Sostiene Pereira, has
At We the Italians we often sold only one thousand
receive messages from copies in America since
Italian authors who would 2001. Imagine for nonfilike to be published in the ction books, even worse!
US. What would you tell They are almost never
contemplated by foreign
them?
publishers, even if they reIt is not easy to guide the present perhaps the betItalian writers about being ter image of a country.
published in the United
States. The numbers do In the case of fiction it
not play in our favor. If you seems to me that their
think that even the Italian success abroad is linked
bestsellers have little spa- more to their universal
ce in the United States, the subjects. Just think of the
process is challenging. case of Elena Ferrante.
Just to give you an exam- Telling a story likely auple, according to Nielsen tobiographic, a sort of a
Book Scan - a company of saga, makes the book apdata and research, which pealing. You want to know
measures the books sales what happens next, and
and the behavior of the what the psychological
10 | WE THE ITALIANS
www.wetheitalians.com
development of the characters and actions are. In
my opinion, the description of the characters,
their dynamic traces, the
development of the plot
that does not belong to
a particular place, make
the difference. Silvia Avallone’s Acciaio, is another
example. Even if she tells
a story about Piombino, a
very local setting, the theme is universal capable to
attract any reader, even
stranger.
In Italy, we publish lot of
local or regional stories,
too often related to cultural stereotypes of our
society. The style is sometimes too refined. But
this is my purely personal
opinion. The US market is