In Italy on February 21, about fifty authors who work with Bompiani (and other publishing houses) publicly protested Mondadori’s proposed acquisition of the RCS Group. Let’s try to see clearly here. Mondadori is certainly the largest Italian publishing group (it includes, for example, such prestigious houses as Einaudi) and it belongs to the Berlusconi family. RCS, that is, Rizzoli –Corriere della Sera, is the second-largest Italian group and it includes a major daily, various other publications, and most important a series of book publishers such as Bompiani, Adelphi, Fabbri, Rizzoli, Archinto, BUR, Lizard, Marsilio, and Sonzogno.
This is the assortment of publishing houses that the RCS board, faced with steep debt, wants to sell to Mondadori. At first there was talk of a new group, assembled through a merger of…
