De Michelis (Marsilio): Publishing Has Many Business Models, but Needs a Standard for eBooks

He almost exclusively reads e-books, mostly as a matter of convenience, but grew up in a home with a library of 90,000 books. He appreciates Noam Chomsky's reasoning method without sharing his politics. He practices triathlon, one of the most challenging sports in terms of physical effort, and simultaneously strives to build strong intellectual relationships with the authors he publishes. He has an eclectic and versatile personality, typical of those who have breathed culture since childhood and have learned to appreciate its many facets. We are talking about Luca De Michelis, who graduated from Bocconi in 1990, and is the managing director of Marsilio Editori, the publishing house founded by his father in 1961. The company, after being part of the RCS publishing group for sixteen years, returned under the control of the De Michelis family in 2016.

➜ What's the situation of publishing today?
Italian publishing has always been dominated by the vertical model where companies control the whole book supply chain, from printing to selling and distribution, with direct ownership of bookstores. Today, this system has become inefficient due to its rigidities. Information technology, in fact, has thrown the whole system into question by changing the role of the media industry, and the very devices and the mobility they afford are the tools that enable to radically revise the book publishing model: publishers will create liquid content, not tied to a particular physical support, and users will decide how to access published content. In essence, publishers will no longer have to deal with the medium but only with the kind of content that travels across many channels.

➜ What will the most successful channel be?
There won't be a single one. Depending on the kind of content and type of fruition (a novel is read sequentially, while a manual or a textbook are consulted by jumping from one topic to another), different models will emerge involving the most relevant digital technologies and kinds of digital content that have closer affinity with novels and essays. In some cases there will be a complete digitization as with professional titles, while in other cases, the process will remain partial. Children's books, for example, will become multimedia and find collaborations with video games, and travel books will be integrated with Tripadvisor-like Internet platforms. School books will exploit technological innovation by proposing models that will radically modify the interaction students have with textbooks.

➜ Will the business model of publishing also change?
Of course, each book product will have to find its most suitable model. In some cases, the subscription formula could be the solution, as it already happens for TV and music.

➜ And in traditional book retail what kinds of transformations will occur?
Today, the distribution and sale of a book account for 70% of its total value. Tomorrow, the idea is to cut a portion of these costs by printing books directly on the spot where and when readers need them.

➜ Today what makes books sell?
Traditional book reviews but also social media activities, as these are an important communication vehicle, for example in self-publishing.

➜ What is the role of e-books?
Consumers have a fairly high capacity to adapt, but the success of a new model is defined by offering uniformity in supply. Today you can buy e-books on Amazon, on Apple with iTunes, and so on. There are too many platforms, causing fragmentation. True success will be achieved with the emergence of a single standard. This is what happened with video cassettes: when the VHS system prevailed on Betamax, thus standardizing supply, the film market greatly benefited from it.

➜ What is the recipe for a best seller?
There is no preset recipe, but a combination of factors. For example, it is impossible to reconstruct the reasons behind Stieg Larsson's exceptional success, yet the phenomenon has opened up a market segment that we are still riding with the series Giallo Svezia [Sweden Crime Fiction]. Just as it is unexplained why some books are not received with the same enthusiasm in different countries: it is the case of Jussi Adler-Olsen, who in Italy did not have the same remarkable results he had in Germany.

➜ How do you win readers in the digital age?
Readers choose an author, not who has published him or her, so the task of publishers is to attract writers by offering them a cozy and stimulating home, built around an interesting project of cultural quality. Increasingly, publishing houses are going after a mass production model at the expense of the relationship between publisher and author. Publishers should instead go back to having lunch with their writers and building a professional relationship based on intellectual and human exchange. Only this way can they attract the most interesting names, those that animate the cultural debate.