«It is as if a Serie C team were in the Champions League final. Something unimaginable ». Sometimes Giovanni Turi scrutinizes the band that wraps “La casa delle mothers” by Daniele Petruccioli and still does not believe it: “Candidate for the LXXV edition of the Premio Strega”. He is the director of TerraRossa, a young and small independent publishing house. Tiny, actually: it has just 18 titles in the catalog. Not only that: it does not have a physical office «and the tax office is my home in Alberobello», he confides. Since, on March 22, “La casa delle mothers” was included in the dozen of the Witch, a tsunami has overwhelmed Giovanni. Because TerraRossa edizioni is him. To give him a hand there are three external collaborators: Elena Manzari, who takes care of the press office and social media, and Stefano Savella and Tiziana Giudice, with editorial duties. He takes care of everything else: invoices, shipping, returns, typography, fair management. «Until 2020 I was a part-time tour guide, between Alberobello and Bari, to have secure income and the editor for passion. Today I manage to dedicate a scarce hour a day to the work of selecting the texts, ”he says.
After the Strega’s surprise, in full Covid emergency, he dedicated himself to books full-time. “Before I was a coach, now the president of the team,” he explains while maintaining the metaphor of football. Almost overnight he found himself having to print a thousand copies of the book, of which five hundred to be sent to the jurors. “I had no idea what the delivery times were, it all happened very quickly,” he recalls. He was used to a restricted circuit of bookstores, mostly independent, and now he sees his book catapulted into shop windows all over Italy. The total circulation in recent weeks has risen to 4,500 copies. A small miracle or a beautiful fairy tale, if you prefer: a David who jostles among the Goliaths of Italian publishing, from Einaudi to Mondadori. As there is no physical location of TerraRossa, the boxes of books are divided between the two-room apartment where Giovanni lives in Bari and the garage of a friend. «Even though I have a specialist degree in publishing – tells Turi – I don’t have an entrepreneurial background. The secret dream is that the brand will be bought by a large group that leaves me the editorial direction: so I could go back to being the editor, the one I really love ».
Today the five of the Strega Prize will be announced: not even a remote thought of entering it? «It seems unlikely to me, we clash with the publishing giants. A Serie C team – he smiles – cannot win the Champions League … ». Or not?