With a turnover of 3.037 billion euros, the book market closed in positive territory in 2019, up by 2.8% on the previous year, consolidating the 2018 result (+3.0%). The figure includes Amazon (estimated by AIE), the educational, digital and professional sectors (books, e-books, databases and Internet services) and book exports. This result confirms that, on a like-for-like market basis and net of advertising revenues, contributions from the public purse and expenditure on hardware and devices to access content, the publishing industry remains one of the top cultural industries in the country. In 2019 it was only just overtaken (by 15 million euros) by Pay TV, which has the advantage of subscriptions to major sporting events. The sector is increasingly focused abroad: rights sales continued to grow in 2019, with an increase of 8.7% compared to 2018. Positive results were also recorded in terms of the number of active firms (+0.1%), but with a slight decline in the number of titles published (-0.8%), while the total number of titles on sale reached 1.2 million (+0.5%). This figure is rising continuously (it stood at 360,000 in 2000) and shows the great potential of having an extensive catalogue – the essential feature of the publisher’s work – which can be best exploited online. The percentage of those who declare themselves to be readers among the population aged 15-74 (“overall consumers” of books, e-books and audiobooks), is growing (65% compared to 62% in 2018), but the average amount of time dedicated to this activity is decreasing, especially among younger sections of the population. These are some of the findings highlighted in the Report on the state of publishing in Italy 2020, edited by the Research Dept of the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), which paints a picture, revealing both light and shadow, of the evolution of an industry gradually returning to levels recorded before the crisis that began in 2010-2011.
Read more on the Report on publishing in Italy 2020
The Summary of the Report on the state of publishing in Italy 2020 is available for download on AIE website
The Report on publishing in Italy: Highlights 2020 is available for download on Giornale della Libreria website
Figures and a detailed analysis are published in the Rapporto sullo stato dell’ editoria in Italia 2020 (in Italian) available in the digital version here and the main online stores
