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Last Issue: #31 The Journey
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905). This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga...Read more
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Loading ...Can you tell us how your blook was created?
The process was different from the traditional route followed by Italian publishing and media. In 2005, we read an inquiry in El País entitled La Generación De Los Mil Euros: young people aged 25-35 forced into temporary jobs with a salary of 1000 euros a month. It was a similar situation to what we had been seeing in Italy for a while, but nobody had ever talked about the more complex issues, particularly the emotional, more personal side. We thought it might be interesting to write about it. Then we distributed the text completely free on the Internet, and also created a site, www.generazione1000.com.
Our “reality book” was downloaded almost 24,000 times, drawing the attention of the press and the major publishing networks, and we were contacted by no fewer than three publishers. We accepted Rizzoli, but in the meantime we were convinced (by the support of the many project workers on 1000 euros a month who kept writing to us), that we should take our project a step further, so we added the Blog. It is a virtual, interactive continuation of our four characters’ adventures, a kind of real-time sequel. We also added the Forum and a petition to the Minister of Employment which received over a thousand signatures in just a few months. This year, the book will also be published in Germany, Holland, Japan, Korea and Greece.
Has the original book been changed by the blog, the active dialogue with the readers? Do you feel a little as if you were cooking with a group of friends?
The book was changed a little compared to the draft of the e-book, after the editing recommended by Rizzoli. The Blog, on the other hand, is a continuation of the book’s plot and continues the characters’ lives so that often the readers can choose what happens to them. There’s a very close interaction between reality and fiction… yes, this does create a strong sense of community, especially because lots of people identify with the events we describe, and find points of reference.
Do publishers have “blog hunters”? Is it inevitable or natural that bloggers are “chased down” in order to have their work published on paper?
Rizzoli contacted us in January last year, when the original e-book had already been online for a few weeks, and the media had begun calling it a “cult” book. It’s highly likely that if we had sent the manuscript to the publishers ourselves, we wouldn’t have got a reply. But we chose to go down the web route right from the start, and that reversed the traditional dynamics of the way things get published. At the moment, though, publishers are focusing heavily on what’s happening on the Internet: who knows whether this is really a search for new talent or a kind of trend related to the spread of blogs as a generational phenomenon. There’s no doubt that it is a very good thing that people who feel they have stories or experiences to tell have such a democratic way of emerging.
What do you think about the increasingly strong link between the web and books?
Think of Gather.com, for example.
It is an essential stage in the development of publishing and technology, a coming together of ideas, information and content that is much broader than just the web on the one hand, or the press on the other. Books written specifically for the Internet, blogs that become books, books with blog sequels, open-source books written by several authors at the same time through a “chain” on the web: they are all equally interesting sides of the same coin. Nobody could have imagined it two years ago, and now it is almost a tradition.
Interview by Lilia Ambrosi
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