Diego Guida: “For small publishers great hopes in difficult times”

This year the weather has been a shrimp for small publishers, after a 2021 that promised a lot with the overcoming of the pandemic. The record attendance, over one hundred thousand, achieved by the annual Roman fair “More books, more free”, however opens glimmers of hope for 2023 which does not promise to be easy.

Descending from a family of Neapolitan publishers and booksellers, Diego Guida began wearing shorts to help his uncles, when he grew up he found himself councilor for the civic libraries and archives of the municipality of Naples during the union of Rosa Russo Iervolino, and today he is national president of the small publishers group of the IEA, those who are neither with Amazon nor with the bookstores but a bit with both, and who in a deep and sudden crisis like this struggle not to feel like children of a lesser god.

What scares you the most?

The surge in energy prices has caused an enormous increase in the cost of paper which penalizes us greatly. Those of us who have an ongoing contract with public bodies or universities cannot modify it and are taking charge of all the increases: raw material, packaging, use of machines and transport. At least if we reprint a book priced at 20 euros we can bring it to 25. The result is a drastic reduction in net revenues.

Even big publishers suffer.

To a lesser extent, thanks to the economy of scale: it is one thing to deal for a ton of paper, it is quite another if you buy a quintal. We are hypothesizing to set up a collective buying group among small publishers to improve negotiating conditions with suppliers.

Budget this year?

A lost year. It’s a shame, because at the end of 2021 small publishers had grown and someone had even postponed the release of some novels from last Christmas to this one. We’ll talk about it next year.

How much will the review of the 18App culture bonus hurt you?

For us it was the only form of indirect but concrete help. I think it is wrong to modulate the bonus for eighteen year olds according to income. It was positive that everyone benefited from it, even the so-called father’s sons, because they felt responsible in their purchases and independent in their choices without waiting for pocket money. I remember when my children took advantage of it: the boy bought books by Eastern European authors he was passionate about, the girl spent it on theater subscriptions. Politicians should listen more to practitioners, who don’t just work in one sector for the duration of a ministry or parliamentary mandate.

What would you like?

Not a handout like the one granted during the lockdown, which was an emergency palliative, nor do we claim rain credits, but the restoration of the tax credit for the purchase of paper, which is our raw material. And perhaps a similar measure on shipments, considering that if the direct shipment of a package goes from 3 to 7 euros, we cannot pass it on to the buyer. Otherwise he says goodbye and goes to Amazon Prime.

But Amazon gives you a big hand.

It would be even bigger if we managed to be proposed and not just sought: algorithms are not so democratic. Amazon has helped small publishers but the relationship becomes complicated when we are forced to apply non-standard discounts, which sometimes conflict with the distribution logic. Bookstores could be used as collection points, but booksellers would never accept. I don’t see any solutions at the moment.

How are readers changing?

Let’s leave Trilussa’s chicken stats aside. The perception is that non-fiction and traditional children’s literature are being reduced to the advantage of comics and graphic novels. Those used to seeing the world on PCs and smartphones are moving into a hybrid zone between reading and images.

How do the authors react?

With a little delay on reality, especially those who are more âgé. When I started out as a publisher, the first average print run was three thousand copies, today it doesn’t exceed 500 because thanks to digital printing you can produce another 500 copies in 48 hours avoiding stock-outs, warehouse costs and unusable stock. Unfortunately, however, we still suffer from the uncertainty of the right of surrender, which by remaining free risks making you believe that a text is finished and instead you find yourself, three months later, a flood of copies back.

What do you recommend to the haggard fools who undertake a publishing business?

To always keep one hand on the heart but the other on the wallet or, to put it less brutally, on the brain. Recalling Valentino Bompiani’s maxim: the publisher does not write the book, does not print it, does not sell it and does not advertise it. He does all the rest. Our profession thrives on this impalpability that exists and does not exist.

Do you have any personal gripes?

At sixty-one, of which almost fifty spent between the counters of a bookshop and the desk of a publisher, I worry that my city represents only 5% of the national market against 22% in Lombardy. On this, unfortunately, the statistics come back to me. Neapolitan authors are also to blame, who publish elsewhere on their first success, except for accusing local publishers of incapacity. Sciascia and Camilleri also continued to publish with the Sicilians instead of complaining about it. But here they all leave.