An invisible heritage. Company books and “bookhood” in the Italian case

This contribution sets out to frame the phenomenon of company books and its contemporary evolution in Italy in the context of corporate publishing and communication. Corporate history books, biographies and other kinds of editions are promoted by organizations to preserve and communicate their own corporate history, identity and heritage to stakeholders. Despite representing a distinctive and long-standing publishing genre, corporate monographs remain a singular case of “books-no books” affected by a fundamental inattention and prejudice about their literary and documentary quality. The historic and contemporary profiles of this sector are retraced and compared through a focused review of several field studies and literary “classics” concerning the Italian case. Indeed, books stand among the most refined, highly performing but also most complex media to be used, in absolute terms, by companies and professionals, who are being called upon to rediscover and learn how to drive such a powerful technology of communication; one that has a long life ahead of it yet.