Anna Mioni is a literary agent, the founder of AC² Literary Agency, and a renowned translator. After a decade of working closely with authors and publishers, she has acquired important and meaningful experience in the publishing world. She recently visited Slovenia and stayed at Goga Press (Založba Goga) literary residence, situated in the heart of Novo mesto. She was one of the speakers at the Conference of Slovenian publishers in Izola, where she talked about publishing rights and the Italian book market.

You have your own international literary agency. What was your vision when you opened it? 

I started in 2012. I got to know about the world of rights when I worked for a couple of years for a publisher which closed after 6 years because they were publishing a very exclusive program. I worked for them as a scout and when my boss left, I went to the London Book fair and for a while I did foreign rights. I felt like the big agencies had a strange style of work; some of the smaller publishers wanted to buy books from them, but they sometimes preferred to not even sell them at all, rather than sell for just a little money to a small publisher. I thought this was not in the best interest of books, so I thought of opening an agency to be able to really do something good for the sake of books themselves. And so, I did. In the beginning it was really hard to get international clients, whereas Italian authors kept asking me if I could represent them, so I began with taking up mostly Italian writers, and from then on, I just kept going to book fairs and started slowly picking up international clients.

What has changed in a decade since then?

Since then, I increased my portfolio of foreign clients a lot, I have more Italian publishers, and I have reduced the number of Italian individual authors. Many agents do adult books only or children’s books only, but I do both and this is kind of puzzling to some publishers, because in the Italian market there is a clear division between these two markets. But, my reasoning was statistic: if one area of literature has a crisis, I have something else to rely on.

What is sellable right now?

Europe is very different from one country to another, for instance Spain is much more commercial, their bestsellers are sometimes really lowbrow. France is more literary. It’s difficult to speak about Europe as a whole, in fact I try to have sub-agents for every European country, since they know their market best. In Italy there have been two big trends in the past years: manga and comic books, which had a sell increase of 300 percent, One Piece was in the top 10 in Italy for years; and a big increase of local authors, while books in translation are decreasing.

Why is it so important that all authors get the opportunity to be translated into different languages, even those less translated? We live in a world where truly a lot of people are reaching for books in English, but what is the value of reading in one’s mother tongue?

First, not everyone speaks English, so we have to make sure that the most important books in literature are available to those people too. And books written in other languages have very little people who can read them in original version, so again we need a good translation to make them known. Reading in one’s mother tongue is supposedly more natural and more immediate, less difficult perhaps; it might help some people to relate to a book more easily. And, importing literature from other countries gives new input and stimuli to our culture and language.

This year, Italy will be the guest of honour at Frankfurt book fair, like Slovenia was last year. What do you expect from this opportunity?

Usually, when a country is a guest in Frankfurt, it puts them on the map. People get to know about its literature, and this especially applies to the most remote publishers, because Frankfurt is maybe the only chance to get to know Asian or Asutralian publishers and introduce them to your work. This Frankfurt guest role has arrived in a complicated period for Italy, because our right-wing government has tried to heavily influence the program and the writers who were invited, which has led to certain authors boycotting it. There are a lot of debates about that right now. The literary world in Italy is very concerned about politics and it is very sensitive to issues like human rights, freedom of speech, and progressive values in general.

What is a mistake you see publishers making when trying to get their authors to break through internationally?

If I am honest, it’s all about who you know and about reputation. The books that sell internationally are the books that were known in a certain circle of scouts. If you want to sell your book, you must make sure that the scouts see them, most big European and American publishing houses pay a scout to find new authors. Also, it is a mistake to think that every book is sellable abroad. It is very difficult to sell something, especially to the English-speaking market, who translate only 3% of the total books they publish.

What is something authors alone can do to help promote their books?

They can let the people in charge promote it. Editors and agents, when they are at bookfairs, do not expect to deal with authors at sale meetings. Usually the dialogue is between your publisher/agent and the potential buyer. Authors are the worst advocates for themselves. My recommendation for authors is to let your agent work for you. Authors have to write; the selling part is not for them.

With translation and publishing rights exchange comes cultural exchange. How have Slovenia and Italy been connected literature-wise, have we collaborated enough, or not enough, what is something you miss in that regard?

There is the chance to do better in terms of cultural relationships between Italy and Slovenia. We are neighbouring countries with very relatable cultures, and we should be closer than we are now. Unfortunately, the Italian centres of literary power are either in the North West or in the Centre, so they tend to ignore what happens in the North East. But there should be more communication, and I hope that it will be so in the future.

What do you think grants literature its potential to change society for the better in our current times?

I think we are at a pivotal point in the history of literature, and it is because of how we perceive literature today. It used to be perceived as something to uplift people, spiritually and morally, but this was applicable to a certain generation of people who came out of families which were not educated. As soon as people became more educated culturally in schools, culture lost its value. Teacher professions are not respected and are underpaid, people with a lot of money in our modern society today disregard art and do not respect it, so culture is not appealing to young people anymore, except if they do not need a wage to survive. Because if you do, you will find another field. In theory, literature has the potential to change the world, but people do not care about that. The solution I found for this is to promote more books for children, to raise a new generation of readers, that was my idea: to educate kids with good books.

You have worked for many years as a successful translator. Has it helped you understand this profession better?

I still work as a translator, it is my identity, it is a way my mind works. As soon as I realised that I could make money with it, I was determined to do it. But since there are not many people who can judge the quality of a translation, this profession is really hard. I also teach translation and in a sense, it is a contradiction, because I am raising my own competitors. But this is the only way to transmit the art of translation to younger generations. The case used to be that you could learn translation from the translation editors who worked within publishing houses, but today most of the work is outsourced and so the chain of transmission has been broken.