On October 17 and 18, 2026, Panodyssey will be present at the first edition of the Italian Self-Publishing Salon, at the Antico Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, in the historic heart of Catania.

This presence is the fruit of an encounter with Monica La Magna, founder and director of the Salon, and of a shared conviction: self-publishing, freedom, independence.

Independence is not a positioning.

Across Europe, thousands of authors choose to publish outside traditional circuits. To preserve their artistic freedom. To maintain a direct connection with their readers. To remain masters of what they create.

Independent journalism, specialist media, new forms of editorial creation all say the same thing: a free voice cannot be delegated.

Yet independent creators face the same obstacles. A saturated digital environment. Algorithms that decide their visibility. Content used without consent. And an economy that makes it difficult to sustain a creative practice.

Panodyssey is built to address this reality. Not as a positioning. As a founding value: authors remain masters of their works, journalists of their editorial line, every creator of their rights.

Because independence is the primary condition of cultural diversity.

Why Italian. Why now ?

Panodyssey has defended one conviction since its founding: languages are Europe's primary cultural heritage.

Not monuments. Not institutions. Languages.

Because they carry imaginaries, memories, ways of telling the world that cannot be translated: they are lived, in their own space, with their own readers.

At a time when digital technologies tend to homogenise cultural expression, Panodyssey makes the opposite choice. To offer each language a full space of expression. To support creators in their mother tongue. To allow independent authors to build their audience within their own cultural universe, without surrendering what defines them.

After the French-speaking and English-speaking communities, Italian asserts itself naturally. Italy possesses one of the richest literary traditions in Europe. Its self-publishing sector is expanding rapidly. And Catania, in October, will be the starting point for a community of Italian authors on Panodyssey.

To preserve languages is to preserve the voices that bring them to life.

The question that frames everything: what becomes of the value of a work in the age of AI?

Generative artificial intelligences have transformed the landscape in just a few years. Content published on the Web, texts, fiction, essays, poems, has become fuel for massively trained models, often without consent, without traceability, without compensation.

Faced with this reality, Panodyssey has developed a concrete technical and legal response: the AI Transparency Notice. It allows each author to precisely define the conditions under which their texts may be used by AI systems, authorisation, restriction, compensation requirements, while also improving the visibility of their works across search engines and conversational engines.

This is not a statement of intent. It is an operational mechanism, natively integrated into the platform, that works today.

Publishing is no longer enough. Being found, either.

In today's digital economy, discoverability has become as decisive a challenge as publication itself. A work that cannot be found disappears, regardless of its quality. And with the rise of generative AI, readers no longer only query search engines: they consult systems that select, summarise, recommend.

Independent creators who do not master this reality are its first victims.

Panodyssey develops approaches combining SEO and GEO, optimisation for traditional search engines and for conversational engines, so that human works remain visible, identifiable and correctly attributed within this new ecosystem.

For Panodyssey, discoverability is not a privilege reserved for the most powerful actors in the digital space. It must become a right for every creator.

What Catania inaugurates

The Italian Self-Publishing Salon chose, from its very first edition, to open itself to Europe. This choice is not trivial.

It says something essential: independent creation cannot be defended language by language, border by border. It is defended together, with shared tools, shared infrastructure, and the conviction that every voice deserves to exist, to be protected and to be heard.

I warmly thank Monica La Magna for taking this initiative. I have known Catania for a long time. I fell in love with this city and this volcanic region from the very first day, its history, its myths, this way Sicily has of anchoring the present in something older and deeper. Going back to meet Italian authors is a new journey beginning. And I am convinced that we will be able to write many chapters together, with Monica and Italian creators, for a long time to come.

And if Panodyssey were to settle in Catania one day, no one should be surprised to know why.

"Every language sings in its own way." — Alexandre Leforestier

"Il Salone Italiano del Self Publishing nasce a Catania con una visione chiara: dare dignità, centralità e protezione agli autori indipendenti. Incontrare Alexandre Leforestier e unire la nostra strada a quella di Panodyssey significa gettare un ponte tra la tradizione letteraria italiana e le più avanzate tutele digitali europee. Difendere la libertà di espressione oggi non significa solo pubblicare, ma garantire che l'opera di uno scrittore rimanga protetta dalle speculazioni delle Intelligenze Artificiali generative. Questo asse transnazionale dimostra che l'indipendenza editoriale non ha confini, e la Sicilia, con la sua millenaria identità culturale, è il luogo perfetto per inaugurare questa nuova era del Digital Trust per tutta la comunità indie italiana." Monica La Magna, Fondatrice e Direttrice del Salone Italiano del Self Publishing.