We’re glad to announce that Italian best-selling author Federico Moccia has signed up with the Pontas Agency for his international representation, after his former agent, Kylee Doust, decided to close down her business. We want to thank Federico Moccia for trusting the Pontas team to fulfill the work done up to today and it will be a challenge to take Moccia’s novels to readers in countries where they have not yet been discovered, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and all Scandinavia, as well as to help bringing to the screens more film adaptations of his work.
Federico Moccia is one of the most amazing publishing phenomena of the last times in countries such as Italy and Spain. His novels have become undisputed benchmark for young audiences with similar impact as the ones by John Green, Marc Lévy or Cecelia Ahern. Rome already has the "Moccia route", the sentences of his books are written on the walls of the city and, as the protagonists of his second novel do, thousands of young Italians (and readers from other countries) seal their love by attaching a padlock on the Ponte Milvio.
The story of Moccia’s success is a novel in itself. His first work, Three Meters Above the Sky (Tre metri sopra il cielo) was rejected by every publisher to whom he had submitted it, until he decided to self-publish it. The two thousand copies were sold quickly pulled and the work survived in photocopies for eight years until, by chance, one of those copies fell into the hands of a filmmaker who realized the potential it had to connect with youth. The work was brought to the big screen in Italy and the novel was published, at last, by Feltrinelli, one of the most prestigious Italian publishers. Since then, Moccia has become a phenomenon inside and outside his country. One of the scenes of his novel I want you (Ho voglia di te), in which the protagonists seal their love hanging a padlock on the Ponte Milvio in Rome, has been imitated worldwide, in similar structures, where thousands of people have filled the cities with padlocks of love.
Federico Moccia has written nine novels so far and four of them have been adapted into huge box office successes, especially in Italy and Spain, where several millions of fans and readers have been delighted by the audiovisual approaches of the novels.
For more information: Anna Soler-Pont anna@pontas-agency.com