A PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 1 I am writing this story about my professional experiences in the hope it will be helpful to all young authors dealing with the publishing world when faced with transforming their creativity into a commercial product. The story begins a very long time ago. I created drawings for illustrations during the fifties and sixties for the Pioniere dell'Unità with articles by Dino Platone, and coloured illustrations for the Corriere dei Piccoli when I moved to Milan in the mid-sixties. The agent in Milan was Piero Dami’s EUROSTUDIO. This experience with Dino Platone, and a passion for scientific distribution, allowed me to also do quite well in writing articles, and their publication in newspapers such as the Corriere della Sera should be enough to confirm this. The fact that my texts and illustrations were up to scratch was further confirmed as soon as my experience with the Corriere dei Piccoli came to an end. Once again, through Pero Dami’s EUROSTUDIO, I began an almost a three-year cooperation with a children’s weekly published in London called "Tell Me Why". Later on an Italian version of this series was published in three books by Piero Dami Editore, as well as large year book by IPC Magazines Ltd in London of which there is a photograph of the cover. To be more precise, I have to say that my name does not appear on the cover where I added it using Letraset, but the title-page reads "The Wonderful Story of MAN" by Amedeo Gigli". My name does not even appear on the covers of the Italian three book series published by Piero Dami Editore. It is once again written on the title-page, however, unlike the English edition in which it is part of the title in a dignified manner. In the Italian version it is placed separately as if extraneous to the context. I have no idea if this occurred due to copy editors’ negligence or because of a decision made by the publisher. Not to mention the never-paid copyright for both the three-volume Italian version and the English year book. The fact remains that something was not working as it should have and for this reason I stopped working for Piero Dami Editore to devote myself exclusively to my current job as an illustrator for Editoriale Domus (Quattroruote, Quattroruote Junior, Volare). On this subject, I cannot help remembering that the then editor-in-chief for Quattroruote, Giancenzo Madaro, used to introduce me to his friends and those working for him as "the Roman who came to Milan to teach the Milanese how a job should be done.”

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