December. The month of holidays par excellence. Just name it and immediately think of Christmas, holidays, desserts, wild shopping, gifts received and given wrong, the wrong people to whom we offered them and hopes that every December 31 we undertake to place the following year and who regularly try to forget for the next twelve months. But December is also the month of the fair small and medium publishers in Rome. An event that I look forward to finally become too, at least once a year, a manic shopping ... of course books. Of different books, I dare say, that is often inaccessible printed by publishers and written by authors kindly overlooked. Maybe because I was always taught to cheer for the weak, or that many of the books to which I have been particularly surprising discoveries of unknown authors, long ignored by major publishing brands, but I always supported these initiatives. The issue which closed on 8 December was the ninth edition, with more than 450 independent publishers for a total of about 16,000 titles on display. 16,000 books. I do not know what you think, but it is a number that at first I read with admiration, then with lustful pleasure, to reach an indefinite state of anxiety mixed with fear. We often talk about the number of readers in Italy (too few), especially when compared with the number of books published each year (too many), but if you think that there are still small and independent publishers heartened a reader hungry for new voices and a writer need some 'space for her, this other face a huge number of books published by small and medium publishers in Italy (in fact only one occurred at the fair) can only make me worry and doubt.
Do we really think that post makes so much more freedom in choosing the readers? Do the publishing industry increasingly pointing to the number, quantity and heterogeneity, while a "guess" sooner or later a best seller? But in this way is not in serious danger of drowning in a book among thousands of bad ideas? And how can readers orient themselves in this turbulent system? See hundreds of people wander around aimlessly in the middle of a carousel stand, brands and ideas, stopping with the same curiosity and uncertainty ahead publishers to "true" and "payment" (ie publishers seeking cash contributions to their full-bodied and incredibly authors were re-admitted to the fair), trying to condense a year of missed visits to the library in a couple of hours random purchases, can give rise to some random new player and that's good, but not in danger of losing many farcene future?
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