Innocenza Cipolletta, second speaker from left and president of the Association of Italian Publishers, listens to a remembrance of the late Luciano Mauri after giving a report on the Italian market to the Scuola per Librai seated at Venice on January 21. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Cipolletta: ‘The Damage Is Twofold”
In the sort of economic report that demonstrates how specifically a governmental move can affect one of the world’s most visible book markets, the Italian book publishers are reporting that in 2024, they saw 23.2 million unit sales evaporate as the Meloni government profoundly changed the power of the “1App” to support the nation’s cultural community.
Innocenzo Cipolletta, president of the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE), told Italian and European publishing leaders at the 42nd invitational Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri in Venice that the Italian market would have grown by 2.5 percent in 2024 instead of declining by 1.5 percent—if Rome had left the 18App intact.
“The analysis of measures to support the demand for books in our country from 2017 to the present,” Cipolletta told the audience, “tells us two things.
“The first is that these measures have had a multiplier effect over the years, helping to create new readers and new buyers.
“The second is that they have allowed the sector to settle on a higher level of sales and turnover, which is necessary to support the process of growth and evolution of publishing houses and the entire book sector. 
“When such measures fail, the damage is therefore twofold.”
This analysis is based on data from NielsenIQ-GfK and made part of the Mauri school’s traditional closing Friday summit programming.
Specifically, AIE estimates that in 2024, book sales in Italy lost €62.7 million (US$64,9 million) to the changes made in the cultural voucher called the 18App, through which teens turning 18 originally had €500 to spend on cultural goods and services.
The lost revenue, the publishers report, would have allowed the book market to stand at €1,596.5 million instead of €1,533.8 million in 2024 (€1,557 million a year earlier, in 2023).
In the top commentary on this graphic, we read, “The replacement of the 18app with the Cultura e Merito card and the absence in 2024 of the funds for the libraries are at the root of the market decline’ in the Italian market. Image: AIE
Amazon’s Impact
Those who followed Frankfurter Buchmesse‘s Guest of Honor Italy programming in October—this market’s second time for that distinction at Frankfurt—will notice the compelling timing of the concerns presented now by Cipolletta. While there have been earlier indicators, the numbers and trends presented are impacting the Italian book business’ assessment of its place in the European publishing industry at large.
- In 2024, Italian trade book sales came in at 03,987 million units, down 2.3 percent from the previous year, or 2.4 million fewer copies bought.
- In value, that decline was 1.5 percent, or €23.2 million in lower sales compared to a total market of €1.5 billion (US$1.6 billion).
- Italy’s -1.5 percent in value puts the country at “the tail end of Europe’s biggest country,” as Cipolletta describes it: Germany is growing at 0.9 percent, the United Kingdom is down 0.6 percent, France is down 0.3 percent, and Spain is growing 9.8 percent, he reported.
And today’s presentation laid out several points of specific stress.
For example, the country’s publishers with sales above €5 million “are down 0.1 percent,” Cipolletta said, while “groups and publishers with sales from €1 million to €5 million are down 9.3 percent. Those with sales less than €1 million are down 2.5 percent.”
In 2024, online sales channels in Italy sold 26.3 million fewer units than in 2023. To say this another way, 6.7 million fewer sales were made by large retailers.
In a market so deeply attached to its bookstores, this should be good news. And indeed, bookstores, whether parts of large chains such as Feltrinelli or independents, actually grew well, by 8.8 percent. Nevertheless, those in-store sales couldn’t make up for the downward slide of e-commerce numbers, Cipolletta reported.
European Comparisons
In this chart from the AIE’s report to the Mauri School in Venice on the 2024 Italian book industry market, the title might be translated as “Which market in Europe had the least positive results in 2024?” Image: AIE
Cipolletta, stepping around Amazon’s name, told the audience in the Cini Foundation’s Salone degli Arrazi that policies “adopted by the world’s largest player in online sales” is structurally changing the market: the weight of the catalogue on total sales, and the specific weight of small publishers,” he said, “is reduced, while bookstores are struggling to cover market segments in which e-commerce divests.”
Nevertheless, he said, there’s something to be said for technology’s role in digital formats—audiobooks and ebooks.
The print book market is joined by sales in digital formats of €114.2 million in 2024.
Sales of audiobooks (via subscriptions) are €30 million. That, Cipolletta said, is up 7.1 percent from the previous year, with ebook sales of €84.2 million, up 4 percent.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Italy and its book publishing industry is here. More on Stefano Mauri is here, more on Alberto Ottieri is here, more on bookselling is here, more on industry statistics is here, and more from us on the Scuola per Librai Umberto e Elisabetta Mauri is here.
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