‘Accompanying authors to success is perhaps the most rewarding activity in our profession,’ says GeMS Stephano Mauri.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

‘The Diversity and Variety of Many Imprints’

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Italian publishing power called GeMS, and many here at Frankfurter Buchmesse are marking these two decades of growth and success. At Publishing Perspectives, we’re glad to have this exchange with Stefano Mauri—president and CEO of Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol, created in October 2005 in a merger that resulted in GeMS comprising 11 publishing houses.

As such, GeMS is Italy’s second-largest publishing entity, following Mondadori. And as it turns out, it’s the group’s actual size and breadth that has helped buoy it along for 20 years.

Publishing Perspectives: Stefano, some might look at a conglomeration of 11 publishing houses—21 imprints—and wonder how you’ve succeeded for two decades . Has there ever been a moment when GeMS’ guiding values of “unfettered creativity and independence” gave you a pause?

Stefano Mauri: The diversity and variety of many imprints makes it possible to adapt to the changes of the readers’ taste. ‘Pause’ is not in our vocabulary, just like for many front-list trade book publishers. Be it wishful or sharp thinking, we have never thought that the ebook was going to dominate book reading. Nonetheless we founded companies like Edigita in charge of the repository of 354 publishers, connected with 241 stores to better exploit the ebook market.

Publishing Perspectives: Thanks to Messaggerie Italiane’s controlling interest (and Emmelibri as part of the group), your dominance in distribution comes to what we understand is more than 60 million copies going into bookstores and supermarkets, yes?

Stefano Mauri: Our distribution by Messaggerie Libri, one of the companies controlled by Emmelibri—also the oldest and the largest in the group—is the same that we offer to 800 publishers. We’ve been granting wide access to the market and the due payment to many publishers for more than 100 years.

We have the best distribution technologies and unique customer know-how. Besides that, Emmelibri is a partner or controlling company in all the channels in which books are sold,  reaching up to 12.000 points of sale. It’s the leader in wholesale and mass market distribution and controlling a chain of bookstores and a franchising operation counting altogether more than 200 bookshops. One every two trade books in Italy at some point is handled by at least one of our companies.

Publishing Perspectives: What has been your happiest surprise in running GeMS for 20 years?

Stefano Mauri: Maybe the fact that just after including Bollati Boringhieri among our publishing houses, The Red Book by CG Jung came to light. A magnificent volume and an authentic publishing triumph. A great gift from destiny.

Publishing Perspectives: And what has been the biggest headache? –what’s the challenge you absolutely didn’t see coming?

Stefano Mauri: We did not see the pandemic coming like anybody else, but I think we acted wisely in that occasion. Thinking back to those days still feels unreal, a dystopian moment in our lives. But books came out stronger when civilized humans had to think better about their fundamentals and the quality of life. The next surprises will come from AI. I think that like the Web itself and smartphones, it will change our lives in a manner difficult to predict.

‘A Reason To Envy’

Publishing Perspectives: Does running a collection of 11 independent publishers at times present special issues that other publishing executives may not worry about?

“We’ve discovered the talent of countless authors and changed their lives. On Mondays they were unknown, and by Sundays they were at the top of the bestseller list.”Stefano Mauri, GeMS

Stefano Mauri: Yes of course. That’s why we have four publishers and/or CEOs, each of them in charge of at least four imprints. Each has his own focus and way to lead his group and then each imprint has an editorial director who is free to choose what and how to publish. Consequently, there are two nodes of freedom, which make the four areas in some way different, and then again 21 editorial directors with their different tastes and cultural backgrounds and goals.

Publishing Perspectives: And have you ever had another publishing executive say how much he envies you having 11 publishers at work?

Stefano Mauri: Actually not. But thanks to the diversity, some of the 21 imprints is always in the charts, no matter how the market is changing. That might be a reason to envy.

Publishing Perspectives: Do you find that your publishing houses become jealous of each other? — do you have to say, as parents do to children, that you love them all equally?

Stefano Mauri: Of course from time to time some are more successful and some are less. This is a gambling business in some aspects. However there’s a positive aspect: there are always good examples to look at within the group.

Publishing Perspectives: And on the other hand, is a little competition for approval a good thing in motivating your 11 houses to do their best work?

Stefano Mauri: I’ve been working for decades with the other publishers, hence we have a deep legacy to the plans and a common language. Also, they all feel responsibility for the whole group as well. To make an example Marco Tarò is CEO of GeMS and publishers over five imprints and we have been working together since 1988. Some internal rivalry may be natural, even beneficial. We discourage it when it becomes pathological.

Publishing Perspectives:  What is your proudest first for GeMS over the years?

Stefano Mauri: It’s impossible to name just one. The phenomenology of a publishing house is so rich. And we’ve had a lot of luck. Our authors have challenged great powers, and we have been sued [by parties] from the government to the Vatican to large industrial groups. That’s what independence is crucial for. We’ve discovered the talent of countless authors and changed their lives. On Mondays they were unknown, and by Sundays they were at the top of the bestseller list.

After years of high-profile ventures failing everywhere, together with a group of journalists, we founded a new newspaper that has had extraordinary success. Our authors have won all the most prestigious awards. We founded from scratch a publishing house in Spain that grows every year as well, just thanks to our know-how, passion, and hard work. We founded an e-book distributor that greatly facilitates the work of publishers and platforms by connecting more than 500 publishers lists to 250 stores online.

We published the book of a young woman, Erin Doom, which became the first Italian No. 1 film in Netflix’s international list. We have been one of the main actors in founding Bookcity, a very successful book event in Milano. The book written by a teacher in Palermo—Stefania Auci—became No. 1 on the list the year it was published and a television series for Disney later on.

Accompanying authors to success is perhaps the most rewarding activity in our profession.

‘I Learned the Lesson’

Publishing Perspectives: Would you like to mention the book that most broke your heart? — one that you felt would do beautifully on the market and it didn’t?

“We grew thanks to scouting. We never needed a capital increase by the shareholders in 33 years.”Stefano Mauri, GeMS

Stefano Mauri: It often happened in the past with foreign novels I cherished for their sense of humor. Any editor knows the saying “humor doesn’t travel.” I’m afraid it’s correct. And I learned the lesson. And I don’t think it’s because the humor is different. I rather think that Italian readers look for something other than humor when they buy a novel.

Publishing Perspectives: Has there ever been a book that you were sure had average chances at the market — and it turned out to be a huge hit that sold through the roof?

Stefano Mauri: I see this from a wider perspective. Any new book of an unknown author selling more than 100.000 copies—no matter how much the editorial, the marketing, the publicity believes in it—is a surprise. And we’ve had many. On the other hand, in our way of working, of constantly engaging with editorial, sales, marketing, and the CEO, when books hit the bestseller list we’ve usually spotted them already as high-potential works.

Let me give you a clear example. We believed so much in the first Harry Potter book in 1998. We made the first printing of 20,000 copies, which was a lot at that time for a children’s book—much more than the first print run in the UK, as far as I know. Booksellers returned half that. And to date, they’ve sold 1.5 million copies in print alone.

But I want to clarify: I’m not saying that every time we focus on a book, it achieves the success we hoped for. Every publisher knows that this is not possible.  I am, however, saying that every time we achieve great success, it’s a book we were particularly focused on.

Publishing Perspectives: How about GeMS’ track record of “owning” the top of the charts for debut fiction in Italy? Has this come about through a kind of emphasis on debut work across your publishers? Or has it been something that occurred without planning?

Stefano Mauri: The point here is that we’ve always known how to manage debut fiction. We had good masters. When I entered the Longanesi group—today a part of GeMS—we were 13 people and today we’re 200; we sold fewer than 1 million copies a year, 20 million copies these days.

We grew thanks to scouting. We never needed a capital increase by the shareholders in 33 years. In the past 10 years we’ve happened to be the publishers of the bestselling debut novel of the year six times. We’ve been lucky. I mention this because in a market with 60,000 new books every year, to reach the No. 1 position you need luck of course, good scouting and editorial for sure. But also that everything from publishing to marketing to distribution to digital and publicity works at its best.

As I said in the process we understand quite well which is the book with more potential and then we design a good launch. Each imprint knows that discovering a new voice is the best way to write its own history and to build a long-lasting and rewarding relation with the author and the readers. In any case, the consistency of an editorial line is not totally foreseen by  the publisher. It is partly the publisher’s decision and partly the readers’ sometimes unpredictable choices.

And you have to be ready to understand and adapt.

Publishing Perspectives: In all your years as a leading player in the Italian market overall, what has been something that you didn’t see coming?

Stefano Mauri: The sudden digitization of readers caused by the pandemic and the boom of TikTok and manga. But having many publishing houses and editorial teams when the romance explosion happened, we found ourselves leading it thanks to one imprint, Magazzini Salani, which was scouting much on the Web and whose revenues multiplied by 10 in three years. Also Newton Compton was already very much on the target with a large side of its publishing program. Unfortunately, on the other hand, we did not cover manga.

‘Continue To Search With Open Curiosity and Passion’

Publishing Perspectives: Using all this experience of that complex, interesting market, do you have any predictions for the market ahead?

Stefano Mauri: Frankly, not even a clue. But if we continue to search with open curiosity and passion, and believe in our choices, authors, both new and established, will show us the way forward. The new generations are changing a lot as an effect of technology and global worries and we will have many surprises.

Successful trade books, though, come from people, not from companies, and if people change, books will also change and adapt.  Editors have to widen their search beyond agents and foreign publishers to scout for books. The Web is an enormous source of talent and testing arena, especially if you target young readers.

Publishing Perspectives:  Almost twice as old as GeMS is the Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers, which you and Alberto Ottieri—CEO of Messaggerie Italiane and president and CEO of Emmelibri—direct with the support of the Fondazione UEM.

This has become an important component of bookseller training and publishing-industry insight for Italy. While this comes from the foundation rather than GeMS, doesn’t the same concept of values inform GeMS? And is there any major insight about Italian publishing that so many fine years of the Scuola have shown you?

Stefano Mauri: I think that many things have changed for booksellers in the 40-plus years of the school. In the ‘90s they had to face the competition of supermarkets offering bestsellers at a lower price. In the first decade of this century they faced kiosk editions that in Italy reached very high numbers and lowered the perception of book’s value. In the second decade, they had to face the growth of Amazon and ebooks—luckily with the agency model which allows a sustainable market.

But the market is still there. And digital product exploitations , including television series, are expanding the reach of the stories created by authors. Maybe in this decade they’ll have to face a development of audiobooks also in Italy. But they are and will be the core of our business as long as they continue to understand that they have to sell the bookstore experience before selling the books.

Publishing Perspectives: What’s your biggest hope for GeMS’ next 20 years?

I want to see our authors grow, new authors having success, the book having the place it deserves in society, and this wish seems to rest on solid foundations based on very interesting research among readers about the impact of reading on readers’ lives, research which we will present in November.  

It’s a fact that books and booksellers survived many revolutions in history and also in the last decades. And I want to see the young people who work with us today grow, be successful and maintain that climate of enthusiasm and passion that my generation enjoyed. 

PP: And how soon can you start making plans for the 4oth anniversary?

Publishing Perspectives: And how soon can you start making plans for the 40th anniversary?

I believe that 25 is a fine milestone too, and I’ll quite likely be here to celebrate it.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on Italy and the Italian market is here, and more on Italy’s Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol (GeMS) consortium is here.

More on Frankfurter Buchmesse, its events and people, is here. 

A version of this story originally appeared in our Publishing Perspectives 2025 Show Magazine. If you can’t be with us in Frankfurt this year, be sure to download our PDF of the full magazine here. 

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