Italian publishing slows down after big jump in 2021: trade market -0.1% year-on-year in first six months of 2024. Data from the Italian Publishers Association's State of Publishing Report presented.
Cipolletta: "The country needs an organic policy for books and reading, immediately restore the 100 million in support for the sector that has been lacking for the past two years. In the year of Italy Guest of Honour 2024 at Frankfurter Buchmesse, we want to be an example for the rest of Europe again."
Italian publishing closed 2023 with a turnover of 3.439 billion euros, stable compared to the previous year (+1.1%). The first figures for 2024, referring only to the trade market (consumer books bought in bookstores, online and in large-scale distribution), denounce the stagnation of the market: -0.1% in value sales in the first six months, which reached 675.8 million euros. Confirmed, in the year in which the country presents itself as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse from October 16th to 20th, its good ability to impose itself abroad, with 7,838 translation rights sold, stable compared to the previous year (7,889) and quadrupled compared to 2001 (1,800). These are the main figures of the State of Publishing 2024 Report by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) Research Office presented today (summary attached. The Report is available on all major online platforms).
"Italian publishing, after the leap that took place in 2021, is struggling to grow again and indeed, if we take inflation into account, is losing ground. The number of copies sold is also declining. These are worrying signs for a country that has no real organic policy for books and reading and indeed, in the last two years, has seen at least 100 million euros in public resources to support the sector disappear," denounces AIE President Innocenzo Cipolletta. "The publishing industry has shown solidity and capacity for renewal in recent years, emerging strengthened from the Covid crisis. Without organic and long-term industrial policies, today we risk losing the challenge of innovation with respect to epochal changes such as that imposed by Artificial Intelligence. In the year in which we are Guest of Honour 2024 at Frankfurter Buchmesse, let us once again become an example for other European countries."
Copies sold in the first six months in the trade market are 46.1 million, down 900 thousand from the previous year. Physical bookstores reach 53.7 percent of sales and continue the recovery started after the 2020 crisis, when they weighed 49.1 percent. Online sales weigh 41.7 percent (down slightly), large retailers 4.6 percent (down). Finally, if we look at genres, the positive trend of fiction is confirmed, especially fiction by Italian authors, which grows over the same period of the previous year by 5.4 percent, and foreign fiction with +3.1 percent. Children books (-2.8%), general (-3%) and specialized non-fiction (-1.6%) and comics (-4.8%) register a minus sign.
Broadening the gaze over the long term and thus on the numbers of Italian publishing today compared to 1988, when for the first time the country presented itself as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the picture that emerges is that of an industry that has followed and accompanied the modernization of the country. Titles published each year have tripled and by 2023 total 85,192, the market (3.439 billion euros) has grown, net of inflation, by 108 percent, and copies of books sold (trade market only, in this case) have grown 124 percent to 112 million. Italian publishing thus is now the fourth largest in Europe and sixth largest in the world. This growth has taken place against a background of increasing internationalization: in 2001 Italy bought 5,400 translation rights abroad and sold 1,800, in 2023 it bought 9,328 and sold 7,838.
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