A winter morning’s fog on the dome of the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute on Venice’s Grand Canal. Image – Getty: Ekaterina Longinova
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
On the Site of the San Giorgio Maggiore Monastery
To be rocked in a vaporetto on the morning swells of the Venetian Lagoon in January is to see a chilly battle between wan sunlight and a cold fog clinging to the dome of the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute.
That tension of mist and light is a perfect setup for a program called The Book Between Eternity and Change (Il libro tra eternità e cambiamento), and that’s the title of Friday’s conference at the Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri (UEM).
On January 31, the 42nd seminar of this “School for Booksellers” will again be seated in Venice. And the round table at the center of its “book between” motif is titled Constants and Variables of the Publishing Profession, a carefully prepared discussion looking at some of the dichotomies in the international book industry—developments that can seem new at one moment and yet curiously familiar.
The conference is available in a live stream as a webinar opening at 3:30 a.m. ET / 8:30 a.m. GMT) / 9:30 a.m. CET, and registration is available here or by scanning this QR code.
Under the supervision of Stefano Mauri, president of Messaggerie Italiane and of Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol (GeMS)—Italy’s second largest publishing group and the national leader in debut fiction—the annual Friday program is unique in world book publishing, and not just for its opulent setting in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini‘s tapestry showcase, the Salone degli Arazzi.
The conference is available in a live stream as a webinar opening at 3:30 a.m. ET / 8:30 a.m. GMT) / 9:30 a.m. CET, and registration is available here or by scanning this QR code.
“Our ‘products’ have eyes and brains. Authors watch the way we treat them. This makes a big difference between publishing and most other businesses.”Stefano Mauri
Stefano Mauri is joined by Alberto Ottieri—vice-president and CEO of Messaggerie Italiane, president of Emmelibri, and president of the Fondazione Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri—in staging the week’s School for Booksellers that precedes the Friday conference. The entire event is expertly delivered by the foundation’s secretary-general Nana Lohrengel.
This year, Mauri opened the weeks of exchanges that prepare the 90-minute round table with an interest in “what makes our job as publishers always changing, and yet in some ways always the same—and different from many other businesses.
“For instance our ‘products’ most of the time are not ‘ours,’ he said. “They’re the intellectual property of someone outside the company, an author. But still we give a physical format to the object and print our trademark on it.
“Our ‘products’ have eyes and brains. Authors watch the way we treat them. This makes a big difference between publishing and most other businesses.”
The Scuola UEM’s producers: From left, Stefano Mauri, Alberto Ottieri, and Nana Lohrengel
Again this year, Mauri has assembled a commanding panel of publishing leadership to explore this question of the constants and variables of the book business. Friday morning’s program is headlined by:
- Jesús Badenes, Grupo Planeta
- Véronique Cardi, Éditions JC Lattès
- Sonia Draga, Sonia Draga Publishing House and the Federation of European Publishers
- Felicitas von Lovenberg, Piper Verlag
- Stefano Mauri, Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol
Moderated by Publishing Perspectives, this round-table discussion and the programming that precedes and follows it form a temporary think tank, an annually intense morning’s symposium on the state of the business and its changing debates.
Friday’s Full Program
Publishing CEOs joining Stefano Mauri on the 2025 Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers round table on January 31 in Venice are Jesús Badenes and, from left, Véronique Cardi, Sonia Draga, and Felicitas von Lovenberg
Here is a look at the full morning schedule of the Scuola UEM’s three-hour Friday morning conference. All times listed are Central European, CET. Again, a copy of the program is here.
9:30 a.m
- Opening: Stefano Mauri and Alberto Ottieri
- Economic Scenarios of the Book Market: Introduction and coordination by Alberto Ottieri, Messaggerie Italiane and Emmelibri
- Forecast for 2025: Where is the Italian Family’s Spending Going?: Angelo Tantazzi Prometeia
- The Italian Book Market: Innocenzo Cipolletta, the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE)
10:15 a.m.
- Remembering Luciano Mauri on the 20th Anniversary of His Passing
- Presentation of the Luciano e Silvana Mauri Booksellers Award, 19th edition
- Presentation of the Nick Perren Job Grant, 6th edition
Related story: Venice’s 2024 ‘Mauri School’ Conference: ‘The New Challenges. Image: Fondazione UEM, Yuma Martellanz
11 a.m.
Constants and Variables of the Publishing Profession
- Jesús Badenes, Grupo Planeta
- Véronique Cardi, Éditions JC Lattès
- Sonia Draga, Sonia Draga Publishing House and the Federation of European Publishers
- Felicitas von Lovenberg, Piper Verlag
- Stefano Mauri, Messaggerie Italiane and Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol
12:30 p.m.
- The Adventures of a Dynasty of Printers: Alessandro Barbera
- Closing: Stefano Mauri and Alberto Ottieri
The ‘School of Booksellers’ Panel
Leading bookselling chain CEOs speaking at the 2025 Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers on January 30 are Alessandra Carra and from left James Daunt, Javier Arrevola, and Michael Busch
For the information of our international readership, a blue-ribbon panel of bookselling CEOs is also part of the Mauri School for Booksellers week of programming that precedes Friday’s closing event.
On Thursday (January 30) at 3 p.m. four of Europe’s and North America’s most accomplished leaders of bookselling chains will be in two hours of conversation with the school’s participants. The event is coordinated by Ottieri, who has crafted the discussion around data indicating that Italy’s bookstore chains in 2024 gained market share over e-commerce and independent bookstores, with Amazon in the Italian market reportedly down by 5 percent over 2023.
How Bookstores are Winning the Game (So Far) will feature:
- James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble (United States); Managing Director of Waterstones, Daunt Books, and Daunt Books Publishing (United Kingdom)
- Alessandra Carra, CEO of Gruppo Feltrinelli (Italy)
- Michael Busch, CEO of Thalia (Germany)
- Javier Arrevola, CEO of Casa del Libro (Spain)
Publishing Perspectives will moderate this discussion among the booksellers at the Cini Foundation, with an examination of each panelist’s concept of the strength of bookstore chains in many markets today, and observations on how such strong showings can be accentuated and shored up.
Friday’s The Book Between Eternity and Change 42nd seminar conference is organized by the Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri Foundation with the contribution of Messaggerie Italiane and Messaggerie Libri, in partnership with AIE (the Italian Publishers Association), ALI (the Italian Booksellers Association) and CEPELL (the Center for the Promotion of Books and reading).
At the Fondazione Cini, the site of the annual Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Image: Fondazione UEM, Yuma Martellanz
More from Publishing Perspectives on Italy and its book publishing industry is here. More on Stefano Mauri is here, more on Alberto Ottieri is here, more on bookselling is here, more on industry statistics is here, and more from us on the Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri is here.
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