Self-Publishing: How to Succeed in Italy and Abroad 2024

Zuzanna Brzezinska is an international publishing expert and  former literary agent. She is currently Project Manager at digital marketing agency The Tandem Collective, spearheading the strategic activation of global collective reading experiences on social channels. She also works as an editorial consultant for debut writers and literary agencies, and an acquisitions consultant for international publishers. 

She has founded IT Law Firm, a law firm that has been dealing with Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law for over 25 years. She is Professor of Copyright at the Milan Università Statale and Professor at the Master in Publishing of the same University. She holds a PhD in Legal Informatics and Computer Science. Author of monographic studies, essays and articles on the topics of copyright and new technologies, with Editrice Bibliografica she has published Manuale del diritto d’autore (2020; second updated edition being printed) 

Valentina Federici is a lawyer and lives in Switzerland, on Lake Geneva. She writes stories for kids and she is passionate about new technologies dealing with privacy and data leakage. Participating in the project  “Viaggio verso l’ignoto” ("Journey into the unknown") with Book On a Tree she has challenged the Artificial Intelligence in a writing competition in the dark that was for her the opportunity to bring out doubts, fears and reflections to which this new technology drives us. 

An avid reader of historical non-fiction and crime novels, Clive enjoys meeting publishers  and authors and helping them to understand the book supply chain and advise them on  good data practice. He is a regular speaker at author and self-publisher events both in  the UK and overseas. 

Writer since 2014 and event organizer since 2016, she has been working in the publishing world for more than 15 years. She has collaborated and still collaborates with the most important Italian publishing houses, she has relationships with various editorial magazines and not only.  She is the founder and organizer of the Festival del Romance Italiano  (Italian Romance Festival), the largest publishing event in Italy on the romance genre. For a year she has opened his own agency L.O. Agency, which deals with events of all kinds related to publishing and her publishing house that will debut this year. 

He works in Amazon since 7 years, is responsible for Kindle Direct Publishing for Italy, France and Spain. 

Editor, ghostwriter and writer coach, she founded the Writing Way Lab and Accademia di scrittura (Academy of Writing). She was editorial director of Edizioni Astragalo for ten years. Graduated in Autobiography at the Free University of Autobiography of Anghiari, for some time she has been dealing with autobiographical and therapeutic writing. Among her books we remember Vision. Narra te stesso, scrivi il tuo futuro, (Vision. Write yourself,  write your future), Ti aspetto qui  (I’ll wait here), Il metodo Writing Way (The writing way) and L’airone e l’aquila (The heron and the eagle). 

Enrico Quaglia now holds the role of General Manager of NW Consulenza e Marketing Editoriale Srl and General Manager of Promedi Srl, both companies operating in the field of book services and promotion. From 2010 to 2017 he held the same role in PDE srl, a company of the Feltrinelli group in which he collaborated as a manager. Always operating in the world of publishing, he has previously been involved in management control and planning and then sales and marketing. Among the most significant experiences was the administrative management and management control at Edizioni Gribaudo, of which he was also a member (family business) until the transition to the Feltrinelli group in 2008. Over the last few years he has gained significant experience abroad, particularly in the United States and England, following the planning and development of two on-site publishing houses, establishing relations with local distributors and their respective sales networks. Partner and founder of Tribùk, an initiative of direct encounter between publishers and booksellers born in 2017 and creator of LibridaAsporto a project born in 2020 and still active, at the service of hundreds of bookshops throughout Italy thanks to the contribution of many publishers. 

Camilla is a digital marketing consultant with a focus on the publishing industry and the Italian market. After a master’s degree in International Publishing at City University of London, Camilla worked for a number of independent publishers, before joining digital marketing agency The Tandem Collective, where she leads the implementation of international social media campaigns. 

Sebastiano Iannizzotto studied comparative modern cultures, played rugby and wrote around. But let’s not get too attached to the past. Valentina and Sebastiano are the co-founders of dieci04, of which they are respectively creative director and head of content. And dieci04 is a creative agency that deals with online projects and communication on social media. He collaborates with brands such as Treccani, Einaudi, Salone Internazionale del Libro, Biennale Tecnologia, iGuzzini, Harper Collins Italia, Sellerio. Among other things, dieci04 edited the anthology The Game Unplugged (Einaudi Stile Libero 2019), conceived and designed the book Quel che eravamo cercando by Alessandro Baricco (2020) and the series I Quanti by Einaudi. 

Claudio Secci is 44 years old, born and raised in Turin. Since 2008 he has written books of all kinds: from thriller to thrillers, from romance to non-fiction. In 2018 he founded a Collective for emerging and emerging authors (CSU) that now has about 400 users. The mission procures exhibition spaces for fairs and promotes works free of charge as a form of volunteering. He has presented his writings throughout Italy with 200 presentations, and has been reviewed by national magazines and major newspapers, and his works have been appreciated by leading literary figures. He is the creator of the Space Land project and the curator of the science fiction section. He is editor of the literary magazine Spazio Lettura - oltre l'autore. He is responsible for the storytelling courses (PON) that CSU holds in the middle and high schools of Piedmont. He is sworn for several literary competitions, including the Gran Giallo di Cattolica. He is the creator of the National Festival of the Writer of Noale (VE). In 2023 he created the digital platform of the CSU Collective for podcasts of the incipit books of emerging authors.

Alessandra Selmi has been editor and ghostwriter for most Italian publishing houses. In 2016 she founded the literary agency Lorem Ipsum in Milan, where she still works. Teacher of writing at Università Cattolica di Milano, she is the author of essays on the professions of publishing, as well as novels. The last, Al di qua del fiume (Across the River, Editrice Nord), was one of the best-selling books of 2022 and is being published in several countries.

Jacopo Viganò began to work in publishing right after high school. Twenty years have passed since then, and he has found the time to be a bookseller, manage a sales network Me.li., survive (almost) unscathed through a bankruptcy and be reborn, have the commercial direction of baldini&castoldi, work as an editor, translator and ghostwriter. Today he has several white hairs, but in Lorem Ipsum, founded by him with Alessandra Selmi in 2017, he works as literary agent with the same enthusiasm and sense of wonder with which in October 1997 he entered Hoepli, his first day of work.