< A PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 5 As I mentioned at the beginning of this history of my professional experiences, I wrote this in the hope it would be of help to young authors and because perhaps they could draw useful advice for their work and expectations from my experience. Above all, I wrote this so they might avoid experiencing some of the not very nice things that happened to me and that are listed below. This is an album for collecting about 400 stickers on the ‘History of Flying’ which I created, writing the texts and drawing the illustrations. On the left one can see the cover and on the right the introduction in which the author’s name is clearly stated with the following wording: "This collection has been created and published by Amedeo Gigli Illustrations by Amedeo Gigli and Marcello Ralli Captions by Paola Zammariotti Aviation consultancy by Giorgio Bignozzi" During my time in Milan, I sold all publishing rights for my work and illustrations for the album at a nominal price as “a creative process” to to Piero Dami Editore, therefore a contract protected by copyright laws. In other words, any further publication should have guaranteed the reproduction of the author’s name and his financial rights. In those days one took for granted that all that would take place automatically. This is a book entitled "La Conquista del Cielo", published by Piero Dami Editore in 1972, created using the same illustrations and texts used for the sticker album. The photograph on the left shows the cover which only bears the publisher’s name. The author of a book, which took two years to prepare, is mentioned in the book’s title-page, shown on the right. A second edition of this book was then published following a number of my observations concerning inaccuracies in a text added without my knowledge. My name should have been added to the cover of this second edition as well as a calculation of amounts owed for copyright. All this took place on trust since, at the time, I had no idea of the publishing ethics that would result in my breaking off all relations with Piero Dami Editore. I have never heard back as far as copyright for the second edition is concerned. This is the book entitled "The Story of Flying" published in 1974 by the Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, London, New York, Sidney, Toronto, Astronaut House, Feltham, Middlesex, England, based on 1972 copyright belonging to Presse Bureau Junior and Piero Dami Editore, Milan, with the same identical contents as the 1972 Italian edition and distributed in the most important international publishing markets as carefully explained in detail in the book’s colophon. The author’s name, however, is not mentioned, and only listed among the illustrators, as one can see in the photograph of the title-page on the right. I, the author, only casually discovered all this about forty years after the important English edition was published, when a cousin who lives in Australia bought a second-hand copy of it. Those who know about the great British tradition in aviation and its history can fully understand what an opportunity for professional success I missed when my name was removed from the English edition. On the left there is a collection of stamps issued by Equatorial Guinea on behalf of the Spanish postal company and later annulled in 1974. There is no need for any specific competence to see that the images on these stamps are the same ones used in my sticker album dated 1965, ex "La Conquista del Cielo" (1972), ex "Story of Flying" (1974), albeit symmetrically printed and with intensified colours. In order to provide a direct comparison, my original illustrations are visible on the right (excluding the portrait of General Adolf Galland taken from a photograph published in his famous book "The First and the Last" which, in my opinion, should not have been republished since it is protected by copyright). I learned of this publication of my work quite by chance after forty years thanks to my daughter, who bought the envelope for me at a market stall in Fano while she was on holiday, and once again there is no mention of my name. The only common denominator linking all these examples is the fact that I made over to the publisher Piero Dami Editore the rights to publish my written work and illustrations, which, as proved by these examples, were physically held by the Piero Dami publishing house during those years since it owned the copyright. UPDATE: "l'HOMME A L'ASSAUT DU CIEL" is the French version of the same book published by DARGAUD ÉDITEUR in 1973 without, of course, the author's name on the cover. BACK