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NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 01:03
A British Italian who surreptitiously obtained hundreds of unpublished manuscripts does not have to go back to jail. Because he pleaded guilty in January, a US judge has imposed a sentence equivalent to his pretrial detention.
Filippo Bernardini’s practices led to great confusion among authors and editors. By posing as an employee of various publishers, he managed to get many manuscripts of unpublished works sent to him.
Bernardini, for example, set his sights on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a thriller by Norwegian Jo Nesbø and a work by actor Ethan Hawke. In the Netherlands he got his hands on a first version of Hanna Bervoets’ Book Week gift Wat we saw.
Obsessive love of books
Until now it was not clear what his motive was. Bernardini did not leak the manuscripts or blackmail publishers. It was not until his sentencing that a letter to the judge provided more clarity: an obsessive love of books drove him.
Bernardini writes that he developed a deep love of books as a child, which was further fueled when he joined London publisher Simon & Schuster. The fact that unpublished works were circulating made him greedy.
“I saw manuscripts being shared with editors, agents, literary scouts, and even outsiders. So I wondered, why can’t I read them?”
Burning desire
He tricked writers and publishers with e-mail addresses that looked like the real ones: penguinrandornhouse.com, for example, where it’s barely noticeable that an r and n have taken the place of an m. Because of his knowledge of the trade, he was able to imitate the tone of such e-mails flawlessly.
“I had a burning desire to feel like someone out of this world and be the first to read those books,” Bernardini explained to the judge. “It wasn’t about leaking them. I wanted to keep them close to me and cherish them as one of the few before they hit bookstores.”
In his letter, Bernardini apologizes for his actions, which he calls unheard of, stupid and wrong. “I never thought about the damage I did.”
Cruel irony
One of the defrauded authors pleaded for leniency in court. “Finally someone who really cares about something – who cares if it was an impostor?” wrote Jesse Ball, author of novels like The Diver’s Game and Since the Silence Began. “You can’t imagine how deadly boring regular correspondence with a publisher is.”
Ball mainly sees the fun in the plot and believed that Bernardini had caused no damage, only some surprise. “Finally it’s worth writing about the publishing world.”
The judge did not find a further prison sentence necessary. However, Bernardini must pay $ 88,000 in damages and he will be deported from the US. Bernardini wrote that he will punish himself the most: “The cruel irony is that henceforth every time I open a book I am reminded of my misdeeds.”
