Interview with Italian publisher D Editore
Find out how this innovative Italian publisher came across Canadian author Douglas Anthony Cooper and set a course to publish Cooper’s works in Italian. 

Amnesia by Canadian Douglas Anthony Cooper was published in Italian by D Editore in November 2018. The book was originally published in Canada 25 years ago. Find out how this innovative Italian publisher came across the title and set a course to publish more of Cooper's works in Italian. 

D Editore is an innovative independent publisher based in Ladispoli, a seaside town north of Rome. They focus on publishing unconventional fiction and non-fiction titles that aim to interrogate, disrupt, and entertain, moving across traditional disciplinary boundaries. The company’s name suggests an element of mystery, but their mandate is crystal clear: to raise awareness of contemporary issues (social, technological, economic) that are too often marginalized in mainstream public discourse. 

Last month our guest editor, Alessandra Bordini, asked D Editore publisher and managing editor, Emmanuele Jonathan Pilia, what it means to be a cutting-edge indie publisher with a strong local presence and a clear global perspective. Emmanuele talked openly and enthusiastically, sharing his perspective on various topics, including the details of the marketing campaign for D Editore’s leading title from last fall: the Italian “brand-new re-edition” (oxymoron intended) of Amnesia, the first novel by Toronto-born Douglas Anthony Cooper.

D Editore is a fast-growing independent publisher on the outskirts of Rome. Could you briefly describe the history of the publishing house and how its cultural project has evolved over the years?

The story of our publishing house is rather unusual, due to our unconventional training as publishers. In fact, none of the three founding members of D Editore has an academic background in book marketing, or publishing in general. We are three designers coming from different areas of study. This helped us not only to understand early on the mechanisms of a complex reality—after all, most university programs in design-related fields, from architecture to graphic design, centre around managing complexity—but also, and most importantly, it equipped us with the skills to master them.

We started with a simple idea: engage with contemporary issues that struggle to penetrate the public debate. The biggest challenge at the beginning was growing out of a mindset which was overly academic and therefore removed from our readers’s sentiments. This led us to our modus operandi in book marketing and social media. We understood that different book types require different investments on different platforms and different solutions to specific marketing problems.

 

Can you tell us a bit more about the origins of the company? When was D Editore founded? 

We started out in 2012. Back then, D Editore had a different name: Deleyva Editore, from Virginia de Leyva, or the Nun of Monza, a controversial and ambiguous historical figure from seventeenth-century Italy. Suor Virginia was a feminist and a socialist pioneer, and her vibrant and rebellious character has inspired us since the very beginning. In those years, we were focused mainly on themes related to the city and architecture.

In 2016, the de Leyva family informed us that the name [Deleyva] had already been registered and we could no longer use it. We decided to see this as an opportunity to completely rebrand the publishing house, expanding our interests and perhaps even becoming more markedly political. The idea is that the legacy of fascism remains strong in Italy and antifascist activism induces sympathy from many people. Predictably, as in any polarizing situation, you lose a segment of your potential audience, but the benefits of building greater trust with readers who hold similar political views outweigh the risks.

 

How many titles do you publish per year?

From eight to ten titles, divided into four series (two fiction series and two nonfiction ones).

 

First published in Canada in the early nineties, Douglas Anthony Cooper’s Amnesia has a fascinating, unusual publication history. How did you discover Cooper’s work and what made you decide to publish it, in a new translation, over twenty-five years later?

I encountered Douglas Anthony Cooper’s work in 2004, when I was a graduate student in architecture at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” Cooper had collaborated with many architects, and his novel (Amnesia) is replete with interesting reflections on the city, so it was recommended to me. There was an Italian edition of Amnesia published by a mid-sized company, Fanucci Editore, but we felt the translation was rather weak. Nonetheless, the book had good success even then, but Fanucci decided not to bet on this author. Over the years, a small but devoted niche community of fans formed around Cooper’s work, who in the meantime had published another novel in English (Delirium), never translated in Italian, and two other books, still unpublished (one of them, Aphasia, is forthcoming with D Editore). From a book marketing perspective, working with a faithful but betrayed reader fan base proved a fruitful strategy: these readers became our main allies in the planning of the book tour across the country. Having close and constant dialogue with our readers often translates into greater empathy towards us (as human beings) and towards the publishing house (as a brand). As a result, our readers want to be involved in planning events in their cities. This is important as it allows us to create an empathic connection with places that are snubbed by other publishing houses.

 

In one of your announcements on Instagram, you mentioned that you specifically hired a publicist to support your marketing efforts to promote Amnesia, a first for a D Editore’s fiction title. Could you talk briefly about the marketing campaign (before and after publication) for this ambitious novel?

The decision to hire a publicist for D Editore had been brewing for some time. What better opportunity than the publication of an ambitious book such as Amnesia to experiment with a new (to us) work model?

From a marketing perspective, our promotion activity operates on three channels that frequently intercept each other:

1. Traditional communication, built on a network of reviews on general and specialist magazines;
2. Online communication, mostly channeled through our social media platforms, which we attempt to harness to [capture and] retain attention on our work; and,
3. Real-world events, which may take the form of book launches, talks, book fairs, and others.

The timing in the management of these three communication channels is also crucial. For example, scheduling the reviews months in advance (point #1) allowed us to establish a certain brand authority and attractiveness, which we used to pitch the title to bookshops and other potential venues for our events, thus extending the life cycle of the book. This point is important and I must make a brief aside. Usually, the average life cycle of a book in Italy is three to four months; this is because in our country there are far more books than strong readers. Furthermore, it is unusual to have a foreign author [in Italy] for an extended period of time. This allowed us to do two things: first, to capitalize on the exceptional circumstance of having a Canadian author in Italy for an indefinite time; and, second, to enhance the appeal of the title when proposing an event to outside stakeholders. We strive to focus our readers’ attention on one project, carefully planning a variety of book launches and events; these, in turn, generate original content (videos, photos, graphic creations, personal narratives), which we use to keep our community engaged.

 

I really enjoyed the Instagram blog tour D Editore organized in the lead-up to the publication of Amnesia. How did the audience respond to the initiative? Did the blog tour boost the readers’ engagement with the title?

Yes, the blog tour has been very helpful. We often plan our blog tours strategically by selecting influencers who live in different cities. This gives us two advantages. The first is that, statistically, social media influencers in the book publishing world—at least in Italy—tend to have a follower base with varied demographics (an influencer based in Turin is likely to have more followers who live in the same area). The second is that [building relationships with influencers with a strong local presence] makes it easier for us to find potential speakers/moderators for our book events. From a direct sales perspective, we were able to identify significant growth in sales through online channels, and greater event engagement in the areas where the influencers live.

 

Blogger outreach seems to have played an important role in the digital marketing campaign for Amnesia. Could you tell us about D Editore’s strategies to reach out to book bloggers/bookstagrammers to help generate buzz around the title? Do you collaborate with them on a regular basis? 

Yes, we try to build tight relationships with various influencers—I’d rather use this term [than book blogger], as many of these young men and women have different approaches to social media: some take photos, some contribute artwork, some write reviews, while others create sophisticated videos, and so on—by selecting those who succeeded in developing greater engagement with their [local] community. We are not so much interested in the number of “likes” as we are in the number of interactions both online and offline. For example, Anna Elisa De Stefano maintains regular, open contact with her community, organizing live events during which she meets with her community members and talks with them. Yet, Anna Elisa has fewer followers than other influencers we work with. 

Another important factor we take into account is thematic coherence: if we pitched a book like Amnesia to an influencer with a follower base of pulp fans, our campaign would hardly be successful.

Finally, an element to be considered [in the selection process] is the influencers’ ability to organize successful events offline. As mentioned above, for us, influencers are not merely users of a specific platform; we try to credit our influencers as intellectuals or experts by organizing with them, and around them, events tailored to the book’s themes and their taste. 

Here’s a telling example: Francesca Zanette [photographer, brand designer] played a crucial role in the book tour that brought Douglas Anthony Cooper to Northeastern Italy; in addition to solving some considerable logistical problems, Francesca managed to involve the local community of photographers interested in Cooper’s photographic work. To this day, the Gorizia book launch remains one of our most successful events organized outside our region. Repeating the experiment in other geographic areas (or, working with another photographer in another region) would have been detrimental, possibly sending the wrong message—that Cooper is a writer-photographer rather than a writer and photographer. It may seem subtle, but those uninterested in photography might have actually misunderstood the purpose of our work and, thus, walked past it.

 

Your social media campaign for Amnesia was very effective. Could you give us an idea of the budget allocated for the social media activities around this title? Do you have any tips on how to compensate social influencers? 

Calculating the exact budget for an all-around digital marketing campaign isn’t easy, since Facebook invoices are issued monthly, but I believe a realistic amount would be about €100 (~CAD$147) per month (for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). The campaign ran for six months. As for influencer compensation, it’s all intangible: it includes [rewards such as] creating events where influencers can showcase their work or featuring their social media accounts in our promotions, free books, and the like.

Amnesia did really well in Italy. Would you be willing to share any sales figures with us? 

To date, we’ve sold about 1,000 units of the print edition and 1,000 of the eBook version. These may not seem big numbers, but we must consider the limited size of the Italian book market.

 

Douglas Cooper is one of your leading authors. Interestingly, he’s also a foreign author. What are the challenges and the rewards of (re)introducing a Canadian author to an Italian audience?

This certainly opens up opportunities and challenges. Our intended target audience has a strong passion for foreign things. Also—and I know that I am about to offend the sensibility of many blog readers here—Canadian cultural products are often mistaken for American ones, for which we Europeans have a strong appetite. Furthermore, being able to work closely with Douglas Anthony Cooper has been another unquantifiable advantage. As mentioned earlier, having a foreign author in Italy [for an extended time] is exceptional, even more so if the author is promoted by an independent, politically engaged publishing house such as D Editore. All this sparks curiosity and leads to requests for the author’s participation in various real-world and virtual events. For example, Cooper was asked to serve as a judge for a small photographic contest.

As an added bonus, we have a perfect relationship with the author, which is very important when you work on ambitious projects, because it makes our work seamless and everyone twice as productive.

As for the challenges, I can only mention the logistical ones. Like every country, Italy’s geography has its specific features which requires those unaccustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the land to be thoroughly prepared. This aspect should not be underestimated, as author performance can be affected by their emotional state, so it is important to plan ahead for any contingencies, including those you would normally neglect if the author was Italian.

 

In a recent interview with Il Libraio, Cooper announced the forthcoming publication of his latest novel, Aphasia, with D Editore. Can you tell us more about this ongoing collaboration with an established Canadian author?

With pleasure. Cooper is not only an extraordinary writer but also an exquisite intellectual. Our ambition is to turn him into an influential name in the Italian literary scene in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as architect, as photographer, and, of course, as writer. For example, we have been trying to organize a photographic exhibition in Rome featuring Cooper for some time, but encountered some obstacles. Rome is a very difficult city, with its wealth of international art. It has one of the highest numbers of museums in the world, and getting noticed by the professionals in the field is a constant and exhausting effort. Luckily, we managed to overcome these challenges and, in the early months of the new year, we’ll be able to hold the exhibit!

 

Speaking of Aphasia, have you already started planning for the marketing campaign of the book? Is there anything noteworthy you may want to share with us (without spoiling the surprise)?

Yes, we have been working on the campaign for Aphasia for a while. Our aim is to promote to the public the image of an independent that publishes a book by an American author—no offense to Canada, as Cooper is Canadian—before it gets published in English. This will then serve to provide impetus in the promotion of Cooper’s new book tour, which will involve peripheral towns, far from the big centres. If it’s unusual to see a foreign author on a tour promoted by a small publishing house, it’s even more unusual to see them in a small town, where even big Italian authors are seldom seen. Another component [of the campaign] will involve social media. In the weeks leading up to the launch, our social media posts will feature more and more glitches and typos—the book is titled Aphasia, after all—even when posting content not directly related to the book; this until every post goes completely black, and the characters become illegible (unless displayed on specific, less popular browsers, such as Opera). Closer to the release date, from the chaos of corrupted signs and glitched images, a processed image of the book cover will emerge like a totem. In sum, we will be using the notion of aphasia as a metaphor for the corruption of language, just like a computer virus might corrupt our media.

As for the offline portion of the campaign, we will invite people to use cryptic stickers with a QR code pointing to a landing page with an increasingly glitchier and illegible countdown. This is for the campaign prior to publication. After the launch, we will use more traditional strategies, even while still trying to enter spaces that are usually separate from the book world (art galleries, media art events, etc.).

 

Your catalogue features several foreign authors. Do you employ in-house translators or outsource the work to freelancers/agencies?

We have some collaborators with whom we work regularly, as we wish to grow together for our mutual benefit and improvement. Italy has a long tradition of translators, and for us, forming ties with a group of young, talented translators is a way of investing in the future of us both, publisher and translator.

 

Do translators play an active role in promoting the books? If so, could you give us an example? 

Yes, they are very active. This is a crucial factor in the selection of our translators. It is not unusual, in Italy, to opt for literary translators for non-fiction works, which sometimes might result in an attempt to beautify the text. We prefer to focus more on the editing phase and choose a translator-savant: a translator-scholar, a subject matter expert who is professionally and emotionally involved with their work. For example, Enrico Monacelli, a PhD student at the “Statale” University of Milan, is translating for us a book by another Canadian author (we like Canada!), Erica Lagalisse’s Occult Features of Anarchism. It’s about the history of ideas, and manages to mix feminism, the history of occultism, and extreme left-wing ideology seamlessly and amusingly. Well, Monacelli is an historian of ideas interested in occultism, a feminist activist, and also, openly, a communist. This [alignment of interests], on the one hand, allows him to participate with ease in events such as book launches and conferences, and on the other, enables him to put us in touch with journalists with similar interests, hence improving our chances for reviews.

 

Thank you very much, Emmanuele, publisher and managing editor of D Editore, for your valuable insights and generous answers.

Alessandra Bordini is a lover of all things Aldus Manutius, inventor of the modern comma and the semi-colon, best known for popularizing the portable book. She is a research associate with the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University and a literary translator. A versatile editor and content curator, Alessandra is the project manager for the Aldus@SFU digital initiative. You can find her on Twitter.

 

 

Do you want to learn more about D Editore's and other international publishers' social media strategies for a global audience? Join us for Livres Canada Books webinar “Global Social Media Strategies” on December 11, 2019, at 1:00 p.m. (EST), presented by Boxcar Marketing founder Monique Sherrett. Read the case study.