My conscience is clear

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Buondì.

Just a clarification regarding last week’s article, in which I explained that I’ve taken off my ‘commissioning editor’ hat.

No, that doesn’t mean I’m closing the ebooks business (see below for this week’s promotion), simply that – well, let me put it another way…

Friday and Saturday, Tom (voice of EasyItalianNews.com) and I were in Genova for the annual ASILS meeting. I’d never been to Genova before, so that was nice. As was having the chance to chat with the owners of other quality language schools in Italy.

We had a great dinner, and lots of conversation, some of which happened in a local restaurant, just off a really impressive piazza, and during other meal breaks, when we stuffed ourselves with famous Genovese focaccia.

If you’ve never been, I strongly recommend a visit, though be warned, virtually the whole city is on a hill. The Genovesi are skinny and energetic people, like mountain goats, despite the focaccia. Now we know why.

So anyway, post-pandemic things are going well for Italian tourism, including ‘study-tourism’, that’s to say people of all ages coming here to learn the language. Great! Optimism all round.

Trust me to dull the mood by pointing out how little time ago it was that we were all desperately depressed and wondering what the future would hold. Personally, I totally would have shut down our Italian language school, but was prevented from doing so by an Italy-wide ban on firing staff.

Once the worst had passed, Stefi and I had a chat about the future. I was, like, let’s close, now that we can, and focus on other things (this, for instance.) While she was more like, running an Italian school is great! Ideally, I’d like to keep on doing it – for a few more years at least. Until grandchildren.

Over dinner, the other school owners I spoke too agreed with Stefi – it’s the BEST JOB IN THE WORLD, apparently.

But what happens, I wanted to know, if (whisper it) there’s another crisis of some sort? Or no disaster, but if a decade or two passes, which it certainly will, by which time you’re no longer so enthusiastic about the risk, the long hours, the bureaucracy, the competition from apps, getting wiped out by artificial intelligence, and so on? What then?

It appears that no one has thought about it, or perhaps they did and didn’t like the conclusions they came to – that small businesses depend too much on a single owner or a few partners who, over many years and with much effort and stress, develop a unique and under-appreciated skillset (basically, doing everything).

That small businesses are difficult to sell for that reason – who would want to take on so much work for so little return – and certainly not for the sort of sum which would reward a lifetime of effort and fund a comfortable pension.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to suffer a stroke (read all about it on our ‘Best of’ page, specifically here: Lifetime risk of stroke? One in six!), and while that appears not to have been sufficient to convince me to clean up my lifestyle, it made very, very clear that I wasn’t going to, and none of us will, live forever. So why not plan for that?

Commissioning and publishing a book, ebook or otherwise, can be done very rapidly, but usually isn’t. I suppose many publishers work the same way that we have been doing, which means the time scale from commissioning to publication might be a year or two, or more for bigger projects.

So if we’re always looking a couple of years ahead, rather than just at next week or next month, sooner or later the thought has to arise – will I want to be doing this forever? So much work for so little return? BEST JOB IN THE WORLD or no, there are other things.

Right now we have Bug, for instance, (he’s over his cold, but still not sleeping through, thanks for asking) who requires a lot of time, plus physical and emotional energy.

And perhaps there’ll be other Bugs down the road, or grandchildren, or opportunities to travel, and so on.

Così. I’m not closing the ebooks store, or at least, I have no short term plans to do so. But neither am I paying writers to produce new texts for us to publish in future years. We have literally hundreds already (scroll through the Catalog to see).

If I have an unexpected burst of energy and enthusiasm, I might organise some ‘second editions’, improve the audio quality, the glossaries, the formatting and so on. But probably not.

Also, our stuff gets pirated regularly, customer service is a drag, and people write complaining that it’s outrageous to pay over fourteen Australian dollars for an ebook, don’t I agree?

Well no, frankly.

We’re talking about something that I might have been working on for years, and which will perhaps only sell a few dozen copies.

So no, I don’t agree that £9.99 (full price), £7.49 (-25% discounted for new publications), or £4.99 (half-price ‘Book of the Week’, see below) is too much to pay for a piece of original learning material that an assiduous student might spend many hours on.

I’d pay those prices (a cocktail, a beer in a pub, a bottle of cheap wine) for materials that would help me with the languages I’m learning, were decent stuff available, which it tends not to be. And I’m not well-off, either.

There are, of course, plenty of other ways for students to improve their Italian reading and listening skills, but seeking them out and learning how to use them requires time and effort. Insomma, your choice, ragazzi!

Beh, anyway, take a trip to Genova and eat focaccia. While you’re in Italy, do a course at what I shall now refer to as my wife’s Italian school, or at any of the quality ASILS schools Our meeting was hosted by ‘A Door To Italy‘, which is very chic and well-organised, run like clockwork by three nice women. Though, like everything else in Genova, the school is halfway up a steep hill (Bologna is flat…)

If you can’t travel for whatever reason, check out the ebooks catalog to find ways that Italy can come to you. The power of reading! With online audio.

And/or if you’re utterly skint, remember that everything on the club website itself is free to use, as is EasyItalianNews.com.

My conscience is clear!

Alla prossima settimana.

Two Very Different Italian Movie ‘Ebooks of the Week’ -50%!

The half-price ‘Ebook of the Week’ offer this week at EasyReaders.org features two VERY DIFFERENT titles from their Classic Italian movie series of Italian ‘easy readers, L’avventura (level B1/B2, intermediate) and Per un pugno di dollari (level B1/B2, intermediate).

The two short texts with online audio have been written by an award-winning scriptwriter (who teaches Italian between movie projects to pay the rent) with the idea of making well-known films from Italian movie history accessible for all learners of the Italian language, not just advanced students with developed listening-comprehension skills.

Why ‘VERY DIFFERENT’? Well, I suppose by way of warning, though more so for L’avventura, our ebook of which garnered (unfairly, as it accurately recounts the movie…) some terrible reviews! People were ‘quite disappointed’, ‘hated this ebook’ etc. Without giving too much away (though there are plenty of spoilers in the reviews) the movie (and so the ebook) is not what film-goers have been taught to expect…

The reaction to the second movie, starring the not yet famous-issimo Clint Eastwood, and other well-known Italian actors, was much more positive (‘very enjoyable‘), as were the sales. I remember reading the ebook myself – it summarises the film very nicely – then seeking out the Italian original of the movie online and sitting through it one Saturday evening with a six-pack. And a lot of fun it was, too.

On the other hand, I suppose I could have written here that the movies were VERY SIMILAR, because, in a sense, they were.

An ITALIAN WESTERN? Who’d heard of such a thing? And who would pay to watch one? And anyway, weren’t westerns old hat?? Sergio Leone, the director, thought differently, obviously, and was proved right. This ‘different’ type of cowboy movie was a success, as was, in a way, the confounding but prize-winning L’avventura (described at the time as ‘the most ‘beautiful’ film ever shown at a festival’ – the critics liked it, even if the public didn’t…)

Different/similar, decide for yourself. Until we close down the offer early next week, each costs just £4.99. So you could get BOTH but pay just £9.99, the usual price for one!

Read/listen to the ebook, then seek out the movies online and give them a try. A complete learning and cultural experience!  Just don’t complain to me if you hate them… I wasn’t the director.

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In 1960, the same year that Felini’s masterpiece ‘La dolce vita’ won the Cannes Film Festival’s ‘Golden Palm’, another Italian director, Michelangelo Antonioni, presented a movie which, though it went down badly with audiences, was admired by his peers. Fellow director, Roberto Rossellini, described it as ‘the most ‘beautiful’ film ever shown at a festival’, so it was no surprise when ‘L’avventura’ was awarded the prestigious Jury Prize.

The first part of an existentialist trilogy, the film was shot in the scenic Aeolian Islands, and on nearby Sicily. A group of friends – including Anna, her best friend Claudia, and Anna’s well-off architect boyfriend, Sandro – are holidaying on a luxury yacht. While they are moored at a tiny, uninhabited island, one of the party mysteriously disappears. A search is begun, but the weather begins to worsen…

This re-telling for learners of Italian makes a great introduction before watching the movie itself. Or simply an excellent supplement to your study program!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at B1/B2 level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy L’avventura, just £4.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Classic Italian Movies series | Catalog

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‘Per un pugno di dollari’, directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, was filmed in the deserts of Spain and released in Italy in 1964. The film wasn’t the first of the so-called ‘spaghetti western’ genre, but did a lot to popularise this rethinking of what was, by then, the rather tired western format. Two further films followed, and the trilogy was released in 1967 in the USA – at which point the director and many of the cast took on American-sounding stage names so as to seem more familiar to moviegoers.

Giovanni Galavotti’s re-telling of the story of the film for learners of Italian makes a great introduction before watching the movie itself (ideally in Italian!) Or it can be used simply as supplementary reading/listening material which, for lovers of the wild west, is guaranteed to liven up your study program!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 8 chapters to read and listen to
• Comprehension questions to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at B1/B2 level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Per un pugno di dollari, just £4.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Classic Italian Movies series | Catalog

How do I access my ebooks?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

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P.S.

Did you read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin from EasyItalianNews.com?

It was a good one, I thought.

Didn’t see it?

Subscribing to EasyItalianNews.com (as I do) and so receiving each ‘easy news’ bulletin via email is FREE.

So what’s to lose?

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