Books

NumeriPrimi° is the new brand, launched on 25 March 2011 for the bestselling titles published by Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling & Kupfer, Piemme and Frassinelli.
This innovative project brings to bookstores, under a single brand, quality paperback editions of all of the bestselling titles of the Mondadori Group’s five publishing houses just a few months after their publication in hardcover, at advantageous prices and ahead of the paperback editions of the single imprints.

NumeriPrimi° will feature only successful titles published around 12 months for their first appearance in hardcover and is expected to produce 30-40 titles a year grouped in three different moments; with a single format, but different covers reflecting the original and at competitive prices of between €12 and €15; each title will be available under the new brand for around 18 months, before being definitively reallocated in the paperback catalogue of the original publishing house.

The new NumeriPrimi° brand is the result of collaboration between Mondadori and RobilantAssociati, Italy’s top brand design and strategy consultants, with a range of leading Italian companies among its clients.

With the definition of NumeriPrimi°, RobilantAssociati has identified, for the publishing sector, a response to a phenomenon already underway in other sectors: a demand for upscale products at more affordable prices, creating, along with the Group’s publishing houses, a new offer to add to the the market. Through its name and logo the new NumeriPrimi° brand will stand out and attract attention, exemplifying the values of success and accessibility that characterise the brand, while using an expressive and highly innovative and identifiable language.

The first 13 NumeriPrimi° titles, in bookstores from 25 March 2011 are:

John Grisham Ritorno a Ford County
Anne Holt La porta chiusa
Paolo Brosio A un passo dal baratro
Madeleine Wickham La compagna di scuola
Nicholas Sparks L’ultima canzone
Fabio Volo Il tempo che vorrei
Giancarlo De Cataldo Romanzo criminale
Dan Brown Il simbolo perduto
Mauro Corona Il canto delle manere
Fred Vargas Prima di morire addio
Clarissa Pinkola Estés Donne che corrono coi lupi
Alessandro D’Avenia Bianca come il latte, rossa come il sangue
Niccolò Ammaniti Che la festa cominci.

The board of directors of Mondadori Electa S.p.A. today appointed Antonio Baravalle, an existing member of the board of the publishing house, as its new managing director.

This followed the acceptance by the board of the resignation of Martin Angioni from his position as managing director and board member in order to take up a new job.

Antonio Baravalle is also the managing director of Mondadori Education and Giulio Einaudi editore.

Mondadori Electa would like to thank Martin Angioni for his efforts and professionalism over the years at Mondadori.

With a new layout and look, the completely renewed Mondadori Education web site – a point of reference for teachers, students and parents – is now online.
The site www.mondadorieducation.it covers all levels and years, from primary to the first and second level secondary, and university, and offers easy and rapid consultation for both catalogues of published materials and training – textbooks, courses, teaching materials and multimedia content in the company’s 12 imprints – as well as new services for teaching:

• @pprendiscienza, is the most extensive database of interactive resources for the study of the sciences in levels I and II of secondary schools with 30,000 digital assets and 1200 virtual lessons. A huge platform that provides digital teaching content and multimedia tools for the creation, integration and extension of daily lessons and the simplification of the work of the teacher;
• Me-book, a new customizable interactive digital book featuring multimedia content. With me-book both teachers and students can have rapid access to the digital content of the book, underline, highlight, make notes, compare documents on different pages, create and personalise lessons using the “slideshow” function and adding text and links directly to slides;
• Libropiùweb, is a new book concept that integrates study with printed texts with technology. The textbook is enriched online with exercises, interactive activities, more detailed background, self-correcting tests MP3 files, film clips, crosswords, conceptual maps and a range of other content;
• LinkYou is a combination of personalised services, created by Mondadori Education for teachers, that includes: Il tuo consulente personale (Your personal consultant) a Mondadori Education contact to assist users in the use of digital teaching materials with LIM and other tools; Il tuo consulente tecnico (Your personal technical consultant) comes into play when teachers want to introduce a teaching activity using new technology; Il tuo consulente didattico e disciplinare (Your personal teaching and disciplinary consultant) available for teachers who have selected Libropiùweb or having difficulties in accessing digital content.

LinkYou is also multimedia teaching seminars: free personalised training courses; a valuable and concrete support to evaluate and make the best use of all of the digital content that accompanies the textbooks chosen by teachers.

The home page also features a dynamic and continuously updated product showcase – contained in a central banner in Flash – a captivating way of presenting to users the new titles in educational publishing for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Scrolling down the page, there are three boxes at the bottom dedicated to the abovementioned services LinkYou, Me-book and the Devoto-Oli, the authoritative Italian dictionary, now edited by well-known linguistic scholars such Luca Serianni and Maurizio Trifone. A complete version of the 2011 edition of the Devoto-Oli dictionary is also available for the iPhone and iPad. The iPad version also allows users to personalise items and to share them on the leading social networks such as Facebook e Twitter, as well as by email.

Other sections provide information concerning the world of education: from teaching films on the Canale video (video channel) to news in “ME&YOU” and Appuntamenti (meetings & events) of interest for teachers.

Laura Donnini has been appointed general manager of Edizioni Mondadori, reporting to the general manager for trade books, Riccardo Cavallero.

Laura Donnini, who has a degree in economics and business administration and is the mother of two children, began her career in multinational consumer goods companies, where she worked for more than ten years in positions of growing responsibility, also at an international level. In 2001 she was appointed managing director of Harlequin Mondadori, the world’s leading publisher of romantic fiction, operating in Italy under the Harmony brand. In 2008 she became chief executive of Piemme, one of Italy’s top four publishing houses, where she reinforced the Geronimo Stilton and Battello a Vapore brands and developed the trade fiction area.

Laura Donnini’s professionalism and experience, combined with the excellent editorial team at Mondadori, are the best possible guarantee to face the new challenges of the market in an innovative and winning manner.

Mondadori would like to thank Massimo Turchetta for his contribution and commitment during his years with the company.

Wednesday 19 January – Maurizio Costa, deputy chairman and chief executive of Mondadori, and Pietro Citati, director of the Fondazione Valla, presented a copy of the new edition of The Koran, published in the Islamica series, to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

The Holy Father expressed his gratitude and expressed his approval for this cultural and religious initiative.

“I am extremely honoured that the Holy Father agreed to accept the gift of a copy of the Koran, just as in 2006 he received a special edition of the Bible,” explained Maurizio Costa. “For Mondadori this event is a further recognition of the company’s tradition as a publisher that is careful to give voice to the widest range of opinions and thoughts in respect of the plurality of ideas and values.”

“There have been few and unsatisfactory previous Italian translations and the commentaries were no better,” underlined Pietro Citati. “Now Italians can read the Koran and abandon themselves to its solemn and tumultuous wave. I think there will be many surprises.”

The text, edited by Alberto Ventura, is published in a completely new translation by Ida Zilio-Grandi, who teaches Arabic language and literature at the University of Venice. The work has been overseen with an indispensable linguistic competence which aims to render the Koran clear and comprehensible, in a modern Italian free of the kind of archaic forms that have typified the translations of ancient religious texts.

The extensive commentary, the richest and most complete ever written in a European language, is the work of an international group of scholars – in addition to Ida Zilio-Grandi, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Mohyiddin Yahia and Alberto Ventura – in an attempt to explain many of the difficulties and ambiguities in the text and to illuminate for the reader the meaning of each individual verse, the possible difference of interpretation and the stories to which reference is frequently made without sufficient background.

Mondadori and Google have signed a partnership that will make Mondadori Group’s wealth of Italian trade books available in electronic format around the world through Google Books and Google eBooks.

This partnership makes Mondadori, the biggest Italian publisher, to join Google Books and Google eBooks programme, and it means that a wealth of Italian literature and culture will be full text searchable and available for sale to readers around the world.

Google Books is already available in Italy and through Google Books readers around the world will be able to search for and find Mondadori Books through Google, to see an online preview of the books and to purchase physical copies of these books through online and physical retailers. Google eBooks–Google’s online bookstore–will launch in Europe in 2011. Through today’s announcement, Google will also sell Mondadori ebooks.

The trade catalogue of the Mondadori Group (Edizioni Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling & Kupfer and Edizioni Piemme) includes over 10,000 titles, 1600 of which are already available as ebooks. All of the titles in the catalogue will gradually form part of the Google Books programme.

Mondadori is the leading company in the Italian book market with a share of 28.4% in 2009. The Group’s editorial production is mainly focused on fiction and essays, paperbacks and children’s books, with over 2000 new titles every year.

“The partnership with Google represents confirmation of Mondadori’s focus on growth and innovative solutions”, stated CEO of the Mondadori Group, Maurizio Costa. “Consistent with this vision we have decided to join forces with an authoritative platform such as the one belonging to Google both to offer a preview of our titles and to make the considerable range of titles produced by our publishing houses available for purchase”, he continued. “The agreement with Google without doubt represents a significant opportunity to promote the quality of our content and our editorial production on a large scale”, concluded Costa.

“This is a fantastic step for the promotion of Italian culture, and it will mean more opportunity for Italian writers, and readers around the globe,” said Santiago de la Mora, Director of Google Books for EMEA. “We want Google eBooks to help stimulate the online books environment, and by working with important publishers like Mondadori we can achieve this goal.”

With Google eBooks, readers can discover and buy books from the Google eBookstore or independent online booksellers who have partnered with Google. This provides a myriad of ways for books to be discovered and purchased online. Whether a consumer buys a Google eBook from Google or from an online bookseller, they are all stored in a single online library. Readers can view their Google eBooks on devices from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers.

The mobile advertising campaign of iPad applications by Edizioni Piemme, whose catalogue of titles available from Apple’s Appstore will reach eleven titles by Christmas, has been launched on Mediamond websites. In details the campaign has been planned on the Mondadori web and mobile sites held by the advertising sales agency, accessible on the iPad.

The focus of the initiative will be on some of the most successful titles of Edizioni Piemme, such as Storie da ridere and the bestseller Nel Regno della Fantasia of the popular children’s character Geronimo Stilton’s; Il cacciatore di acquiloni by Khaled Hosseini and the autobiographical A un passo dal baratro by Paolo Brosio.

“We are delighted to be able to promote our applications on the Mediamond network,” declared Laura Donnini managing director of Edizioni Piemme.
“It is the first campaign for our mobile applications and we believe that the launch of the applications of our books will certainly benefit in terms of visibility and downloads,” she concluded.

Satisfaction was also expressed by Davide Mondo, managing director of Mediamond, who said, “Our product portfolio is clearly the ideal platform for the realisation of an application advertising campaign. With the tools we have available we have designed an immediate communication campaign that focuses on the interests of the users that visit Mondadori’s digital properties,” he concluded.

Edizioni Piemme has a consolidated leadership in children’s book publishing, with a market share of 18% (Source: Nielsen November 2010), thanks to the success of the “Il Battello a Vapore” and “Geronimo Stilton” brands, as well as its successes in the fiction, non-fiction and religion sectors for general readers.

Mediamond, the joint venture between Mondadori Pubblicità and Publitalia ’80, was set up in 2009 for the sale of advertising on the web. Mediamond’s portfolio is made up of a network of 30 titles that every month reach more than 8.4 million users and 710 million page views, which represents a 35% coverage of internet users.

Mondadori has accepted the invitation to Italian companies in the paper and printing sector made by Greenpeace to join in the fight against deforestation with a commitment to define a gradual shift to the use of FSC-certified paper (from sustainably and responsibly managed forests) in the production of books. “Forest-friendly” paper will be used for some prestigious and high-quality literary series, such as: Strade Blu and Oscar Spiritualità by Edizioni Mondadori, Einaudi Stile Libero, Wellness by Sperling & Kupfer and, in children’s books, some of the Geronimo Stilton, Scooby-Doo and Flambus Green series published by Piemme.

“I am extremely proud of the commitment that Mondadori made to help build awareness through the Greenpeace campaign,” stated Riccardo Cavallero, general manager of the Mondadori Group’s trade books area. “The reason why Mondadori has decided to accept Greenpeace’s invitation is that it well help us to operate in an increasingly more sustainable and responsible way in the market, and it will allow us also to offer to our readers a concrete opportunity to make a conscious purchasing decision in favour of the environment.”

“Mondadori’s decision,” claimed Chiara Campione, head of the Greenpeace Forest campaign, “is a first and much appreciated step, especially given the quantity of paper consumed by the company. We hope that it will be followed by others, so that in the short term we, as readers, can be sure that we are not helping to destroy a part of a tropical forest every time we buy a book.”

In addition to e-books, a series of interactive applications for the iPad are now available for some of the titles in the children’s catalogue. These apps area exclusively available from Apple’s App Store, starting on 11 November. Geronimo Stilton is the first protagonist of this operation, which involves some of the most popular titles.

Funny stories

Some of the titles in the series will be sold in a digital format containing the full text as well as extra content. The digital version of the books include a complete audio version of the stories, with the voice of Geronimo Stilton and the other characters from the world of Topazia. The application’s main menu also offers the following functions: write, underline, highlight, make brief notes on the page, write on notepaper, cancel, place bookmark, record brief audio tracks.

But above all it is the extra content that makes the app so much fun and engaging for younger users.

Character profiles. Every time a new character appears in the story, an icon on the side of the text indicates that there is a profile of the character.

Games. At the beginning of each book there are 4 games, such as “find the hidden detail”, “identify the differences”, “find the right shadow” and “find the intruder”.

Outline images to be coloured. In the text, on the side of some images an icon indicates the same image in a black and white outline form that the reader can enlarge and colour, using a palette of colours that appears on the screen.

From the menu it is also possible to access the online catalogue of Geronimo Stilton apps available for the iPad and to send an email to friends, inviting them to join the fun with the range of Geronimo Stilton interactive applications.

The application, developed by Enhanced Press, can be used on the iPad and is downloadable from the App Store. Follow this link: http://itunes.apple.com/it/app/id398491904?mt=8. New titles will be available for sale every two weeks.

In the Realm of Imagination

The bestsellers of Geronimo Stilton come to the iPad, in a version to be read, listened to and …touched! The application provides the complete text of the book that can be flicked through, page by page, or listened to by activating the audio with the voices of Geronimo and his friends.

The pages, that are already full of exciting words, will surprise young readers with the numerous animated images, that provide sound effects and the possibility of interacting by dragging certain objects on the screen.

Over 300 pages of full-colour illustrated text as well as 50 pages with a glossary of imaginative words; more than 150 multi-touch animated images with sound effects; animated presentations profiles of all the characters of the Compagnia della Fantasia and partial audio of the story.

The application, developed by Simplicissimus, can be used on the iPad and is downloadable from the App Store. Follow this link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id400428205?mt=8.

The Geronimo Stilton cartoons

Finally, an application has also been created to read the cartoons of Geronimo Stilton in a digital format: cartoons can be viewed in their entirety in the portrait mode (vertical) or enlarged in the landscape mode (horizontal).

The main menu of the application allows users to write, underline, highlight, make brief notes on the page, write on notepaper, cancel, place bookmark and record brief audio tracks.

From the menu it is also possible to access the online catalogue of Geronimo Stilton apps available for the iPad and to send an email to friends, inviting them to join the fun with the range of Geronimo Stilton interactive applications.

Soon there will also be an interactive iPhone application for the cartoons of the popular editor of the Eco del Roditore.

The application, developed by Enhanced Press, can be used on the iPad and is downloadable from the App Store. Follow this link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id400088098?mt=8. New titles will be available for sale every two weeks.

In recognition of the work of the much-loved poet Alda Merini, an offbeat and moving personality who was able to speak directly to people’s hearts, Mondadori is publishing the first anthology that brings together all of the poetry and prose of a leading protagonist of Italian twentieth century literature: Alda Merini, Il suono dell’ombra. Poesie e prose 1953-2009.

From the most intriguing, engaging and well-known of her masterpieces to forgotten pages, this collection is accompanied by an extensive critical and biographical appreciation by Ambrogio Borsani. The early collections of poetry, La presenza di Orfeo, Nozze Romane and Paura di Dio are collected for the first time and the book also includes the more recent and familiar collections, such as Vuoto d’amore, Superba è la notte and her last book, Il Carnevale della Croce, along with a number of rarities. Alongside the autobiographical L’altra verità and Lettere al dottor G., that give an account of a heartbreaking descent into the abyss of an asylum, also her complete short stories are included, from Il ladro Giuseppe to the lyrical sonatas of Delirio amoroso and Il tormento delle figure. A section of biting and highly amusing aphorisms, provide evidence of almost twenty years’ work. The book also features a small number of unpublished poems.

On 2 November, to commemorate Alda Merini a year after her death and to mark the publication of the anthology, Licia Maglietta will give a reading of some of the poet’s work at the Auditorium in Milan (Largo Mahler 1, at 6.30 pm – admittance free).