Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Guest Post: an Overview of the Italian indie ebook market, pt. 4

Like that guy used to sing, this is the end, and my friend Marina has some final observations about the Italian Indie Ebook Market, and its denizens.

guestpostfeatAnd as two of those denizens, both Marina and I feel very strange about this whole situation. Because we are writers, and writing is what we do.
And seeing the bad state of the market in which we – more or less – live, is a source of pain and of depression.
If it’s so bad why do you keep writing and self publishing?, you might ask.
Because, as Donald Fagen said when he channeled Ray Charles, that’s what I do.

Thank you for reading these posts, and thanks to Marina for writing this chillingly accurate overview.
One last time into the fray, my brave!
Enjoy! Continue reading →


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Guest Post: an Overview of the Italian indie ebook market, pt. 1

My friend Marina blogs in Italian and English in her Space of Entropy, and is a fine writer with a number of great self-published books. She is also notorious for her habit of telling things as they are, and not as they should be. An attitude much appreciated by the Devil, if you remember your J.B. Cabell.

guestpostfeatSo when she told me she was writing an overview of the Italian indie book market, I asked her if she was willing to publish the first draft of her work on Karavansara. Marina was so kind she accepted, and here is the first installment of this fine article, that will keep us reading for the whole weekend.

In thanking Marina for her kindness, I think I’ll point out that I have encountered much if not all the horrors she describes.
So here we go – enjoy, please don’t laugh too loud, have pity for our plight and please comment if you feel like. Continue reading →


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An unexpected gift in a tin box

This morning I was waiting for a packet, and I was quite surprised when the delivery man brought me two.
Now I am usually scared as hell of postmen and delivery men in general – they usually bring bills and notices of payments overdue. It’s turning into a sort of Pavlovian obsession: the neighbor’s small nasty dog starts barking like mad, I hear the postman’s Panda car drive to the gate, and start worrying.
But a second package?
Bills and payment injunction don’t come in packets.
And indeed, the unexpected package contained a gift from a friend.
Yes, sometimes I get gifts from my friends.
Which is quite pleasing.

So now I am the proud owner of a Smith-Waite Tarot Deck, Centennial Edition, a beautiful deck of cards that comes in a nifty tin box and is perfect for carrying around. Continue reading →


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Silvano Campeggi, a small gallery

Yesterday we lost Silvano Campeggi, aka Nano, one of the greatest movie poster artists to have graced the field.
Born in Florence in 1923, Campeggi created many iconic Hollywood posters – and a measure of his staggering production can be gleaned from the fact that sixty-four of the movies for which he created posters were nominated for Oscars.
It’s been calculated that all in all, Nano Campeggi created theposters for a total of 3000 movies.

What follows is a small gallery of his work.
He will be missed.