Between market and research, the intellectual is multifaceted

Overproduction of titles and decline in copies sold: this is the current picture of the Italian book market after the fleeting post-pandemic boom. How can we reverse a trend that reduces shelf life to a mere breath and doesn’t seem to give even the most qualitatively worthy texts time to resist? We talked about it with one of the least pigeonholed figures in our cultural panorama: Vincenzo Ostuni, co-editorial manager of Ponte alle Grazie and ‘research’ author just announced among the 12 finalists of the Strega Poetry Award 2026.

What does it mean to publish a book today, in practical and emotional terms?

Concretely, it depends on the operational context, because each publishing house is a different ecosystem. Some are forced to limit their activity to commercial production, others can afford higher quality; but in reality the scarcity of public funding forces almost all to rely on the market. Including Ponte alle Grazie, which is also part of a large group like GeMS. In such a context, every choice is subject to economic considerations: I’m not saying that only potential best sellers are published, but that a book presumably destined to sell poorly must be sustainable.

Yet, and here I come to the emotional aspect, if it is important to admit that publishing is an industry, it is equally important to remember that every publication remains a factor in the formation of civil thought. In addition to the balance sheet, the contribution made to public opinion, to political awareness, to literary society and above all to readers must be weighed. That said, growing commercial pressure has been compromising the quality of releases for some time, with the effect of lowering public tastes: if in the 70s we found Calvino, Moravia and Morante at the top of the charts, today names linked to genre fiction almost always dominate. In an editorial panorama that fortunately remains broad, the contribution of successful books to the cultural debate has unfortunately become relative.

Among those of 2026 from Ponte alle Grazie, is there a title destined to quickly meet the readers’ favor and one to conquer it in the long term?

Given that I share responsibilities with Cristina Palomba, among the titles I have directly dealt with I mention ‘The Spy’ by Jorge Dìaz: a thriller set in Spain and Germany between the 1910s and 1940s, soon to be released, which I believe can immediately find a sequel. For slower and more lasting success I focus on ‘Innocenza’ by Andrea Esposito, a disturbing and thoroughly literary story, which has Aspromonte as its backdrop.

You respond to the choices of a publishing house that is part of a large group: how important are the skills acquired in smaller, perhaps more daring companies, such as Minimum Fax and Fazi?

I worked on Minimum Fax as a boy, when it was little, but not so daring: it was mainly about finding great authors, inexplicably neglected like Carver, or on the launch pad like Wallace, and valorising them. Fazi, of which I was editor for non-fiction and editorial director, was more structured, but also not very suited to experimentation. Some examples of Italian fiction, such as that of Francesco Pecoraro, Daniela Ranieri and partly of Emanuele Trevi, prove that Ponte alle Grazie is to a greater extent. Wherever I have been, I have tried to bring my interests and ability to mediate between quality and quantity. Of course, now my scope is much broader.

Between 2004 and 2025, nine editions of his work in verse ‘Faldone’ were released, the last of which competes for the 2026 Strega Poetry Prize: what is it about?

Of a project dating back to my adolescence, which I began to conceive in the early nineties with the intention of building subsequent books within a single literary organism, in constant and endless change. The body of poems that compose it, although ordered into sections, is the subject of a continuous structural reorganization, between subtractions, additions and overlaps. Every single text is included in quotation marks and brackets, but the ‘outside’ is not represented: the reader himself is invited to conjecture about its nature. These are dialogues and monologues, an uninterrupted oral discourse with multiple voices endowed with full enunciative powers. The themes range from language to fatherhood, from politics to mathematical infinity; there are no limits. This propensity for experimentalism comes from my love for authors like Pagliarani and Sanguineti.

How do you reconcile your creative drive with the concreteness required by your job?

Trying to harmonize the literary passion, always pursued as an irreplaceable form of expression, with that for publishing. Although it is more recent and contingent, it is the second that influences the first: several authors I met as a publisher have inspired my writing.

I read that he owns the entire collection of Mickey Mouse books: does the publisher have to keep a pop soul alive?

In fact, I keep all the issues of the historic Disney comic, but I don’t even have time to leaf through them. As for the pop soul, it must absolutely be preserved. In the musical field, for example, despite loving avant-garde artists such as Stockhausen, Nono and Ligeti, I cultivate an inclination for Pink Floyd and the secret pleasure of listening to Baglioni.

To your experiences as an editor and writer, you combine a degree in psychology, a doctorate in philosophy and attendance of a programmer course: what is an intellectual made of in 2026?

I don’t know exactly, I think it must be multifaceted. Personally, I am an eclectic who tries to keep together the infinite fragments and languages ​​of the world. ‘Faldone’, not surprisingly, is a polyphony that deals with the most varied themes. A desperate but practicable attempt to remain open to multiplicity by connecting as many components as possible. Like poetry and publishing, which are heterogeneous, but reconcilable.