A slight decline in sales, which however remain above those of the pre-pandemic period, confirming the resilience of the Italian publishing industry. This is what emerges from the numbers presented at Buchmesse, the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, by the AIE (Italian Association of Publishers).
In all, the essays and novels sold in physical and digital bookstores in the first nine months of 2022 for a value of 1.022 billion (- 1.9% on 2021 but + 14.4% on 2019). “The numbers we present today testify to the solidity of the Italian market – comments AIE president Ricardo Franco Levi – but we cannot hide the fact that the continuous increase in paper costs and the burden of inflation on consumers make us look to the immediate future. with concern “.
Dal Report on the state of publishing it emerges that the Italian market (fourth in Europe behind Germany, the United Kingdom and France) today is worth 3.429 billion euros (+ 10.7% compared to the previous year) and that it is confirmed as the first cultural industry in Italy. The data include, in addition to non-fiction and fiction (boom in e-commerce and comics, as far as production is concerned), also the educational, professional and export sectors. Growth on foreign markets is now one of the objectives: in 2023 Italy will be the guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair and in 2024 at the Buchmesse. Our country invests over one million euros every year in translation contributions and in the last twenty years the gap between rights bought and sold abroad has narrowed: in 2020 8,586 titles were sold and 9,127 bought.
The Italians who claim to have bought paper books in the last 12 months are 48% of the population between 15 and 74 years old, 51% if we also consider ebooks and audio books. 49% of the population, on the other hand, does not buy any books. Who reads more than seven books a year is 32% of readers, but generates 59% of sales in a very concentrated market.