Sperling & Kupfer and Wattpad Team-Up to Bring Wattpad Stories to Italian Bookstores
Sperling & Kupfer will receive first-look publishing rights for select Italian-language Wattpad stories, as well as an exclusive first-look for Italian translation rights for Wattpad Books titles.
MILAN AND TORONTO - April 12, 2021 – Sperling & Kupfer and Wattpad, the global multiplatform entertainment company for original stories and leading social storytelling platform, today announced a partnership to bring Italian-language Wattpad stories to bookstores and bookshelves in Italy and around the world. Sperling & Kupfer will receive first-look access to Italian-language Wattpad stories for publication and translation rights to English-language Wattpad Books titles.
The Italian Wattpad community is made up of more than 1.4 million people, and globally, writers have written nearly 14 million Italian-language story parts on the platform.
“Wattpad users in Italy are passionate, engaged, and dedicated to their favourite authors,” said Ashleigh Gardner, Deputy General Manager, Wattpad Studios, Publishing. “We’ve seen the Italian Wattpad community come out in droves to support published Wattpad stories and on-screen adaptations, so we’re thrilled to work with Sperling & Kupfer to bring more Italian-language Wattpad stories to bookstores everywhere.”
“Sperling & Kupfer and Wattpad have always been a winning combination, since 2015, the year in which our publishing house published After, the most successful narrative work born on Wattpad. This innovative idea, using new technology to find and empower a new generation of authors, represents an evolution of publishing. We are therefore very happy that this lasting relationship is now sanctioned by this official partnership” said Stefano Peccatori, General Manager of Sperling & Kupfer.
Sperling & Kupfer is the Italian publisher of After, Anna Todd’s international Wattpad hit, best-selling novels, and film franchise. The first After film debuted at number one in 17 international territories, including Italy, when it was released in 2019.
Other successful Wattpad stories published by Sperling & Kupfer include the Bad Boy series by Blair Holden, the hit Kiss Me Like You Love Me series of novels by Kira Shell, and four novels from Silvia Ciompi, which are now part of Sperling’s fiction list.
The deal follows a string of international publishing partnerships for Wattpad. In 2020, Wattpad announced a partnership with Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial for Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, and with Penguin Random House UK for UK and Commonwealth countries.
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About Wattpad
Wattpad’s vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories. Wattpad’s flagship app is a leading social storytelling platform, home to a community of more than 90 million people who spend over 23 billion minutes a month engaged in original stories. Wattpad’s Story DNA Machine Learning technology allows the company to discover stand-out stories among more than one billion uploads written on the platform. Wattpad Studios and Wattpad Books are transforming entertainment and publishing, using data-backed insights to turn Wattpad stories into books, films and TV shows. Wattpad Brand Partnerships help brands build deep engagement with Gen Z consumers. The company is proudly based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more at company.wattpad.com.
About Sperling & Kupfer
Sperling & Kupfer is one of the oldest publishing houses in Italy. Its fiction list includes internationally acclaimed authors such as Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steel, Anna Todd and Italian bestselling authors Sveva Casati Modignani and Sara Rattaro.