Books

On Bol.it it is possible to choose from over 90,000 ebooks from Italian and international publishers. The online bookstore offers users the widest selection currently available in our market with more than 5,000 Italian titles made available by the leading publishing companies and distribution platforms in the country. In addition, the catalogue – which features both classics and bestsellers, as well as many new titles published simultaneously with the printed versions – also includes some 85,000 ebooks in English, ranging from great novels to non fiction, children’s books and scientific and professional titles.

To mark the launch of the new ebook catalogue, on Bol.it it is also possible to download for free, in cooperation with Mondadori, the digital version of Il fu Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello.

All of the digital books on the Bol.it store are available in the e-pub or pdf formats and can be used on the most common commercially available tablets and e-readers. A wide selection of the titles in the Italian ebook catalogue is also DRM-free and social DRM, and can therefore also be read on the iPad.

The Bol.it ebook offer operates alongside the already vast catalogue of the internet store, which features a total of 2.5 million products: from ‘traditional’ books, in Italian and English and professional titles, to a large range of multimedia products, including ebook readers, DVD and Blu-Ray films, music, games and gift ideas.

The top ten best selling ebook titles in Italian on Bol.it this week were:

1. Nella testa di Steve Jobs by Leander Kahney (Sperling & Kupfer);

2. La caduta dei giganti by Ken Follett (Mondadori);

3. Inchiesta sul cristianesimo by Corrado Augias and Remo Cacitti (Mondadori);

4. La solitudine dei numeri primi by Paolo Giordano (Mondadori);

5. L’intermittenza by Andrea Camilleri (Mondadori);

6. Non avevo capito niente by Diego De Silva (Einaudi);

7. Il broker by John Grisham (Mondadori);

8. Il bizzarro museo degli orrori by Dan Rhodes (Newton Compton Editori);

9. La strada by Cormac McCarthy (Einaudi);

10. Uomini che odiano le donne by Stieg Larsson (Marsilio).

Canale Mussolini was chosen in the section dedicated to the historical novel in honour of the memory of the founder of the Prize, the writer Marcello Venturi.

The jury motivated the award as follows:

The novel is a fresh and invigorating reconstruction, characterised by an original stylistic and aware approach, that recounts the story of a family of colonists from the Veneto to the new towns established after the draining of the Pontine marshlands, over a number of generations. It paints a highly suggestive picture and manages to translate into a colourful daily language a authentic country saga laced with civic passions and dreams of social redemption against a backdrop of significant historical moment. Added to this is the pathos of personal memory – the author himself comes from a family of colonists – that is able to evoke the atmosphere and characters of events that have for some time been removed from a “politically correct” historical research.

The award ceremony will be held at the Teatro Ariston in Acqui Terme on Saturday 23 October at 5.30 pm, in the presence of the President of the Piedmont Region, Roberto Cota.

In addition to Antonio Pennacchi, during the event, which will be presented by Alessandro Cecchi Paone, prizes will also be presented to Alessandro Orsini, in the historical research category, for his book Anatomia delle Brigate rosse. Le radici ideologiche del terrorismo rivoluzionario (Rubbettino), Marco Patricelli, in the popular history category, for Il volontario (Laterza), and Folco Quilici in the “History on TV” category. The special prize “Testimone del tempo 2010” will be awarded to the Hon. Sandro Bondi, Vittorio Messori and Massimo Ranieri. While Ennio Di Nolfo will receive a Special Prize “for his career.”

Telecom Italia and the Mondadori Group today signed an e-book distribution deal in Frankfurt, at a ceremony attended by Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabè and Mondadori Group Deputy Chairman and CEO Maurizio Costa.

As a result of this deal, Bibletstore Italy’s first digital bookshop opens for business today, offering over 1,200 e-books from the Mondadori publishing group.

Eight hundred titles from Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling & Kupfer and Piemme’s back catalogue will be sold through Telecom Italia’s e-book store (www.biblet.it) along with over 400 new books published simultaneously in paper and electronic form.

Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabè declared: “We are particularly pleased about this deal with the Mondadori Group. It is a significant testament to our ability to innovate, which allows us to position the company as a driver of high-tech-led markets. Telecom Italia’s launch of Bibletstore spells the adoption of a new business model that differs from models adopted in other countries. Telecom Italia is developing this model in partnership with publishers, which retain the greatest possible freedom in terms of commercial positioning and setting price points.”

Maurizio Costa, Deputy Chairman and CEO of the Mondadori Group, stated: “The global transition currently underway in the book market, prompted by the uptake of new technologies, is set to have a significant impact also in Italy. Rapid mobile device growth will free reading. People will have more time to explore new content, which will lead to an increase in consumption in step with worldwide trends for increasing demand for information, learning and cultural entertainment. This partnership with Telecom Italia is a significant first step for the Mondadori Group’s leveraging of its publishing assets, which will also become available over the main platforms and devices available on the market.” Mr Costa concluded: “In the near future, our focus on the customer/reader will increasingly become our most precious resource. By sharing expertise with Telecom Italia, we will be able to offer our users an increasingly personalized service.”

Ken Follett’s latest novel, Fall of Giants, is one of the first new Mondadori books available on Telecom Italia’s e-book store shelves. Back catalogue titles from the Group’s publishing imprints include literary masterpieces by Jane Austen and Thomas Mann and recent bestsellers such as Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, along with books by leading lights on the contemporary book scene such as Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and genre literary greats ranging from Agatha Christie to John Grisham. Also available are great thinkers of the past such as Descartes and Seneca, and more recent Italian and international non-fiction, as well as classic children’s books from Hans Christian Andersen’s Fables and the latest generation of children’s heroes such as Geronimo Stilton.

In a world first, the partnership between Telecom Italia and the Mondadori Group will see the launch this Christmas of three subscription-based themed e-book channels: high-brow lit, genre lit (thrillers and romance), and books for children. This new development will completely revolutionize the way readers are offered books. For a set monthly fee, readers will have access to a theme-based reading list. Subscribers can read as many books as they like from this list, one book at a time.

Telecom Italia’s dedicated new e-book platform will carry ePub and PDF format e-books protected by a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system to protect authors’ copyright.

Customers can, starting from today, buy e-books on Bibletstore from their PCs and pay by credit card. In the near future, TIM e-book readers will be launched that offer straightforward and direct access to the e-book store via 3G phone connection. Customers will pay nothing to browse the store, and will only be charged for the books they purchase. Using this method, payments will be accepted by credit card or by charging against credit on the SIM card. E-books may also be purchased and read using Olivetti’s OliPad, a new tablet that is being launched over the next few months, and on other devices that download dedicated applications free of charge.

In this novel Ken Follett tells the interrelated stories of five families (an American, a Russian, a German, an English and a Welsh) against the backdrop of the historic events that took place from 1911 to the First World War and the October Revolution. As in Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, Follett ably reconstructs a historical saga, weaving the events of big history into the smaller stories of protagonists that move, love, struggle and suffer against the background of the terrible events of the twentieth century. From the coal mines of Wales to the sparkling candelabra in sumptuous palaces, and from the corridors of politics to the alcoves of power, from Washington to St Petersburg, from London to Paris, the story moves incessantly between hidden dramas and international intrigues. The protagonists are rich aristocrats, the ambitious poor, courageous and strong-willed women, all of whom have to deal with war and the consequences of war.

Good and evil, love and hate, peace and war intertwine in this epic novel and are also graphically represented by two different covers, one white, one black.

Ken Follett is considered the world’s leading author of bestsellers and has sold more than 120 million copies, 18 million with Pillars of the Earth alone.

From 1 October, Sky Italia will broadcast the Ridley Scott-produced TV drama series based on Pillars of the Earth.

Antonio Pennacchi won the 64th edition of the Premio Strega with the novel Canale Mussolini.

Pennacchi’s book recounts the story of a large, patriarchal, peasant family that together with 3,000 other families in 1932 is relocated to Lazio from Veneto to colonise the Agro Pontino swamps that had just been drained by Mussolini.

The heroes of this moving saga are the Peruzzis, from the grandfather to Pericle to Adelchi, three generations of agricultural labourers who with tenacity fight the march of destiny. Drawing a large picture that has the wide scope of a poem, the story weaves the adventures of the Peruzzis together with the no-less engaging events that took place during the half century of Italian history spanning from the beginning of the 20th Century to the Second World War.

Pennacchi recalls the past with a clear and critical spirit and merges it with subtle emotion to produce a vast and rich story, an authentic epic, a great Italian novel.

Following legal authorisation and the positive results of duediligence, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A. today exercised the contract as per thepreliminary agreement stipulated on 16 July – and already communicated to the market– forthe acquisition of 70% of the share capital of Edizioni Piemme S.p.A.

The definitive price, fixed on the basis of the results of due diligence, is of €14.107 million.

This operation will allow Mondadori to significantly strengthen its position in thechildren’s books segment and also acquire a portfolio of established authors in the fictionand non-fiction area.

An extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore today approved the partial split of the subsidiary Elemond: the company will transfer, to the parent company Arnoldo Mondadori, its stakes in Einaudi and Mondadori Printing, its specialised magazine business and property holdings.

The split, that will not involve any equity exchanges given that the split company is already wholly-owned by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, that will become effective on 1 April 2002, as part of a larger project aimed at re-organising the Elemond Group.

The project, approved by the Board of Directors at a meeting on 13 November 2001, aims to simplify the corporate structure and to align the business in which the Elemond goup is involved.

In fact, after the split approved today, the company will focus on its role as a an operating holding company for the Mondadori Group’s activities in the art and illustrated books sectors, the organisation of exhibitions and the management of museum bookshops.

Maurizio Costa, chief executive of the Mondadori Grou and Peter Olson, chief executive of Random House, today signed the definitive agreement in Barcelona for the creation of Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori. With revenues of over $100 million, the new 50-50 joint venture will become the world’s second largest Spanish-language book publisher.

Random House Mondadori will bring together all of the imprints of Random House and Mondadori operating in the book markets of Spain and Latin America. The operation is subject to the approval of the European Union, which is expected by the end of the summer.

Olson and Costa also outlined the organizational structure of Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori and announced the name of the company’s operational head.

The board of the joint venture will be made up of six members; three nominated by Random House and three by Mondadori. The chief executive of the new company will be Riccardo Cavallero, 38, who, since 1998, has been the chief executive of Grijalbo Mondadori, Mondadori’s main company in Spain and Latin America.

Based in New York, Cavallero will have responsibility for all of the global activities of Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori, which will be divided into three regional divisions to be known as Grupo Editorial Plaza & Janés for Spain (to be headed by Juan Pascual); Grupo Editorial Sudamericana for Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (to be headed by Faustino Linares); and Grupo Editorial Grijalbo for Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela (to be headed by Giancarlo Corte).

Each of the divisional heads will report to Cavallero, and will be responsible for the Random House Mondadori imprints and companies of the group in their area. The different divisions and imprints of the group will maintain full editorial autonomy, in line with the long-standing traditions of the two owners.

“With this joint venture Mondadori achieves an important objective: to play a leading role in the very significant Spanish-language markets,” said Maurizio Costa. “The high levels of demographic and economic growth in the countries concerned and the possibility of reaching the Spanish-speaking market in the US offer our new company interesting new prospects. And, for Mondadori, we believe, there are also interesting opportunities in the school textbook and magazine publishing markets.”

“Today’s signing and the agreement with Mondadori represents a moving and significant moment in the history of Random House,” declared Peter Olson. “With Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori we have created a fundamental juncture for books, authors and all those operating at a high level in the book industry. Our most important commitment is to generate the highest levels of circulation possible for our authors, not only in Spain and Latin America, but generally around the world.”

“The Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori has been given a business mandate by its owners focused on maintaining a strong independence at a local level in the identification and implementation of its editorial programmes for each of the imprints in the group,” said Riccardo Cavallero. “We will guarantee to each of our divisions a high level of autonomy, while at the same time ensuring they benefit from efficient centralised operational support and technological resources at an international level.”

Random House is the world’s biggest book publisher and constitutes the book division of Bertelsmann AG, the world’s biggest media, e-commerce and interactive content group. Mondadori is Italy’s leading publisher of books and magazines and one of Europe’s leading media groups.