A spot of sunshine on Day One of the 77th Frankfurter Buchmesse. In the foreground, Messe Frankfurt’s Forum, the fenue for the Guest of Honor Philippines pavilion. Image: FBM, Marc Jacquemin
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Few Believed That Europa Editions Would Succeed’
Many Frankfurt regulars know Michael Reynolds, the executive publisher of New York’s Europa Editions. And many, of course, also know Sandro Ferri and Sandra Ozzola Ferri, who co-founded both Europa Editions in 2005 and Edizioni E/O in 1979.
While thinking about how the Stateside Europa Editions is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, it’s also interesting to contemplate the fact that the parent company in Rome is approaching a half-century.
“A handful of years after Europa Editions was founded in America,” Michael Reynolds tells Publishing Perspectives, “Edizioni E/O celebrated its 13th year in business in Italy. It was a glittering occasion, held during the Salone del Libro in Torino in 2009. I was still commuting between Rome to New York in those days, so I was there in Turin to celebrate with my friends and colleagues from Edizioni E/O. There was a lot to celebrate.
“Edizioni E/O was and is a ground-breaking independent press … beginning with its location away from the traditional centers of Italian publishing, to its early commitment to bringing stories from—as Penguin and Philip Roth called it—the Other Europe, to its insistence on reaching readers directly and through bookstores rather than remaining aloof and beholden to traditional promotional mechanisms, and, above all, in its commitment to a true editorial project, a proposta editoriale, as opposed to following the whims of the market.
“All of these things, seen by many as anathema to the industry in the 1980s, added up to a singular and enduring independent publishing house that today is one of the most prominent and successful independent presses in the country.
“A few years from now,” Reynolds says, “Edizioni E/O will celebrate its 50th birthday, and it has gone from strength to strength over the intervening decades. Europa Editions is the fruit of that grand history; it’s an extension, if you will, of Edizioni E/O’s original project, and a testament to Sandra Ozzola and Sandro Ferri’s vision, courage, and belief in the strength of stories.”
‘Europa Is Proudly, Stridently Independent’
The New York house that Reynolds has so faithfully nurtured as a type of offspring of the Italian company has looked like a nonstop success story for most of these 20 years.
Michael Reynolds
“That’s very kind,” Reynolds says. “And surprising! And, of course, those times come around quite frequently. Europa is proudly, stridently independent, with a small-press way of going about pretty much everything.
“At the same time, our business depends on publishing hits with some regularity. It’s what allows the rest of the program to thrive. And we can do it, we have been doing it, and we’ll do it again.
“When we started off, very few people believed that Europa Editions would succeed,” he says. “Many warned Sandro and Sandra that it was a bad business move, and when things were starting to go well for them in Italy no less.
“Books in translation? ‘American readers aren’t interested,’ they said.
“A program that mixed up books in translation with books by writers working in English? ‘Even worse,’ they said. ‘A Frankenstein’s monster of a publisher!’
“‘Trade paperback originals (our preferred format for the first decade-and-a-half)? Critics won’t review them, readers won’t respect them,’ they said.
“I don’t believe the point was ever merely to print and distribute more books from other countries. The point surely is to choose well and publish well and have readers read and enjoy the books.”Michael Reynolds
“‘Insisting and persisting with authors in whom we believe, for years, even when the early results in the market are disappointing? Suicide,’ they said.
“There are truisms in publishing, as with any industry, I suppose, that we all get very attached to and struggle to see beyond. Europa has shown several times that those truisms exist to be challenged and that there are different ways of doing business as a publisher and succeeding at it,” Reynolds says.
“To have provided proof positive that some of the shibboleths of American publishing are nothing more than that seems to me something to be proud of.”
And what of the lay of the land in the United States for translation—often described as a hopeless market for much of anything non-English?
“I’m wary of talking about books in translation as a category,” Reynolds says, “and I don’t think statistics like the famous 3 percent are very helpful in the end,” he says, referring to a once-chanted statistic that no more than 3 percent of the American market would ever go to translated work.
“I don’t believe the point was ever merely to print and distribute more books from other countries,” he says. “The point surely is to choose well and publish well and have readers read and enjoy the books. None of that is dependent on how many titles in translation are released every year.
“We should be looking moreover at how widely non-American books are reviewed, if the ecosystem of editors and agents and publishers are working together to bring them to market, whether retailers are supporting them, if the prize-giving bodies are acknowledging them, and, finally, if a significant number of readers are reading them.
“And, yes, I think things have changed in all those areas. There is greater bibliodiversity in the American book ecosystem today, for sure.
“I should add that it is almost all thanks to the work of independent publishers, although of course it doesn’t hurt when a corporate imprint takes a swing at a book translated from another language.
“But we need others to understand this model, not to cut us out of competition for big books, not to severe our relationships with authors we’ve poured are hearts and our resources into making big.
“So, just as the arrival of the hits tends to be cyclical, so does the worry about the cycle being broken. This morning I worried all would not be well. This evening I’m more sanguine. Most days are like that.”
“I think Europa has played a role over these 20 years,” Reynolds says. “From the start, we have been very focused on books for readers. That may sound obvious; I don’t think it is.
“We’ve tried to find books that have really spoken to readers in their original markets, that appear important, undeniable, great in large part because they have been read and discussed and debated by large numbers of readers in their native markets.
“Without publishing down, without betraying our own—idiosyncratic, subjective, fallible—sense of what is a good, deserving book, we have tried with our publishing program to create bridges between not only a writer and her readers, but between readerships.
“I think that’s a powerful thing, and a kind of guiding principle at Europa. My favorite stories I hear from readers of our authors’ books are those where a book has provided a moment of connection between them and readers of that same book in another country or another language.
“It gives me hope that we are not so isolated and siloed off from one another. After all, if we can enjoy the same story, if we can feel connected to the same character and his fate, if our sympathies are stronger than our antipathies, if there is that common ground between us, then there is hope.”
“I give credit again to Sandro and Sandra for not resting, and not allowing me or anyone else at Europa to rest on our laurels.
“There have been moments when we were before a fork in the road: keep doing or trying to do what has proven successful for us, find a formula and repeat it; or, try something different, add something new, look in new places for new ideas and new voices. Fortunately, we have almost always chosen the latter. And the editorial and financial foundation of Europa has grown more robust as a result.
“Modest but frequent innovation rather than repetition. That’s the trick! I don’t know what the next thing for Europa will be, but I would like to think that we will continue looking for it and not get stuck in a rut.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on Europa Editions is here, more on translation and translators in literature is here, and 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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