I love this story.
I received an email last week from a librarian in southern Italy. It reads:
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Dear Matthew,
We write from a public library in a very small town in southern Italy, in Salento (Puglia), near the city of Lecce (TUGLIE). A library that doesn’t have sufficient financial resources to buy books frequently. However, thanks to the generous collaboration of many authors and editors, the number of books and readers grows day by day.
Since your books are so successful among our young readers that requests are increasing, we would be very grateful if you would collaborate in the preservation of our heritage by donating your series of books (in Italian), perhaps through your Italian publisher.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you for your interest.
Yours sincerely,
Silvia Sperti
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I was honored by the request. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend was a bestseller in Italy, and it’s always thrilling to hear from international readers, especially librarians. To date, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend has been published in 23 countries worldwide.
By contrast, I have only traveled to one country outside the United States in my entire life: Bermuda, for my honeymoon.
Yet almost every day, I communicate with readers outside the United States about my book via email or social media.
I passed the email on to my agent, asking her to forward it to my Italian publisher, but I also sent it to my mother-in-law, Barbara, who demands to read all positive news about my books and publishing career.
My mother-in-law then proceeded to reach out to the library on her own, using Google Translate to send her message. She exchanged emails with the librarian, and once she had secured the address to the library, she ordered Italian editions of my book via Amazon.it and had them shipped directly to the library.
Readers in a small town in Italy will now have greater access to my story thanks to the initiative of a small town librarian, a technology that I use almost every day to seamlessly communicate between languages, and most importantly, the kindness and generosity of my mother-in-law, who couldn’t stand the thought of readers anywhere waiting for my book.
