Marco Ferrario

Marco Ferrario is a pioneer in the digital publishing industry in Italy, with a broad international network and vision. He was the founder of Bookrepublic in Italy in 2009, after 16 years spent at Mondadori in charge of the new media department and of some book imprints. Over the years, Bookrepublic became a leading player in the ebook and audiobook distribution, an independent ebook store in the Italian market and an agency managing the global digital communication for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. In 2017, in addition to Bookrepublic, Marco also joined Storytel as country manager developing the local audio business from scratch and getting in charge of other markets including Germany and France in 2022 before leaving the company in April 2024. Presently, he is Director for Bookwire in Italy, after the German international digital distributor decided to enter the Italian market through the acquisition the distribution business of Bookrepublic. Besides this, he is now CEO of Narae, a new venture in partnership with Mondadori to expand the webnovels market in Europe through the upcoming launch of an app to access, purchase and read this type of content on everyone’s smartphones.