One of the most dramatic settings prepared by Stefano Boeri for his 2024 Guest of Honor Italy pavilion at Frankfurter Buchmesse, this view of the much-discussed piazza at the heart of his designed is lit with the raised lid of a grand piano in the foreground. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Johannes Minkus
By Bruno Giancarli, Association of Italian Publishers (AIE)
With Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
What a Difference 36 Years Make
As Europe’s Treaty Establishing a Constitution approached its 20th anniversary on October 29, Italy stood as the European Union’s fourth largest book market.
With an annual sales value of €3.338 billion (US$3.7 billion), its workforce numbers more than 70,000 people, and it’s seen as the country’s “first cultural industry” in consumer purchases, meaning that it’s ranked ahead of television (both paid for and broadcast); film; music; magazines, and daily newspapers.
As many stress today in publishing’s world markets, Italy’s books are frequently at the heart of narratives that may go on to be developed for screens and stages, games and music.
In our look at key statistics from the Italian book marketplace, we will focus on several major facts, and then we’ll make some comparisons between Guest of Honor Italy uno e due, first and second: Italy was Frankfurter Buchmesse’s guest of honor market in 1988, as it is again now in 2024.
Quickly, several overarching notes:
- Since Italy’s first appearance a Frankfurt’s guest of honor in 1988, the domestic market has doubled in value, net of inflation.
- In 1988, around 50 million books were sold in bookstores and supermarkets every year.
- In 2023—with online digital bookselling added—112 million copies were sold, including textbooks, academic and professional publishing, and digital books.
- The leap from the pre-pandemic period to today has also been significant, with 12.5 million more copies sold in 2023 than in 2019, a jump of nearly 13 percent, and fueled in part by young, media-savvy readers driving the growth of such genres as comics and romance.
Related article: ‘Juergen Boos and Innocenzo Cipolletta on Frankfurt’s Guest of Honor Italy‘
And since the 76th Frankfurter Buchmesse closed on October 20, the trade show’s president and CEO, Juergen Boos, has told Publishing Perspectives more details of the success of the Italian guest of honor program.
“I’m pleased to report,” Boos says, “that from what we gathered, 220 books from and about Italy were published in the German-speaking markets since autumn 2023, and we had more than 90 Italian authors in Frankfurt, participating in programs in and around the book fair.”
A total “220 books from and about Italy were published in the German-speaking markets since autumn 2023, and we had more than 90 Italian authors in Frankfurt, participating in programs in and around the book fair.”Juergen Boos, Frankfurter Buchmesse
What’s more, he says, “There were 205 Italian publishers, agents, and industry service providers presenting themselves at the fair across some 1,600 square meters of exhibition space [17,200 square feet].
“The Italian Publishers Association organized an Italian trade program at the collective stand, which was incredibly well-attended, from what I learned. We also heard that Italian publishers and agencies had packed calendars and were very satisfied with the number of additional business and rights deals made.”
And here, you can read our full interview with Boos and Innocenzo Cipolletta, president of the Italian Publishers’ Association.
Today, as part of our Rights Edition in the early weeks after Frankfurt, we want to share with our full readership—some members of which were not in Frankfurt to see our print magazine—the statistical report we were able to offer the fair’s 115,000 trade visitors from 153 countries.
In 2022: 7,889 Rights Sales Transactions
In terms of international rights sales, the 7,889 transactions completed by Italy in 2022 came to more than four times the 1,800 transactions of 2001, when the industry began to survey its activities.
As was evidenced at Frankfurt—both in its piazza-centered guest of honor pavilion in the Forum and in its major collective stand in Hall 5.0—the Italian book market has become a frequent guest of honor at other, smaller book fairs and trade shows of the world, in cities including Paris, Bucharest, Tunis, and Warsaw, even as newly added tools such as NewItalianBooks.it.
Indeed, Italy is to be guest of honor in February at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, and in May at Nopi Chatzigeorgiou‘s Thessaloniki International Book Fair.
Powering Italy’s market, more than 750 publishers are operating at various financial scales. Annually, there are:
- 36 publishers doing more than €5 million
- 83 publishers doing between €1 million and €5 million
- 102 publishers working at between €500,000 and €1 million
- 100 publishers reporting business between €300,000 and €500,000
- 313 publishers at between €100,000 and €300,000
There are 112 imprints in Italy, controlled by publishing groups. The four largest of those groups account for half of the trade’s sales in Italy, from the largest:
- Gruppo Mondadori
- Gruppo Editoriale Mauri Spagnol (GeMS)
- Gruppo Feltrinelli
- Gruppo Giunti
Charts Illuminating Italy’s Marketplace
Among the most interesting comparative elements we can provide you is a look at this year’s Italian guest of honor and the original appearance as guest of honor by Italy in 1988. Our last three charts (with the orange title bars) give you some of that data.
Trends between 2001 and 2023 in the purchasing and selling of translation rights in the Italian book market. Values are expressed in numbers of rights transactions. Source: AIE Research Department
In the above chart looking at Italian literature in the international rights market, note that in 2021, where you see a vertical gray box, a survey of rights transactions was not conducted. The 2022 data were collected by updating the survey matrix.
One of the tools now used by the Italian market is the platform NewItalianBooks.it, which was inaugurated on June 11, 2020.
Source: AIE Research Department on data from multiple sources
As you can see in the above chart, trade channels contributing 49.3 percent of the market (in 2023) include bookstores, digital retailers, and large-scale retail points of sale. Some 41 percent of sales are made online; around 4 percent are made in supermarkets, and roughly 55 percent of sales are made in the country’s bookstores.
Unit sales trends between 2019 and 2023. Values are expressed in this chart in millions of units and in percentages. Increases are relative to 2019. AIE Research Department on Nielsen BookScan data
Regarding the chart above: As in many world markets, the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic created a rare time of concentrated reading in Italy for many consumers. Comics (including manga and graphic novels) found an unprecedented footing during the pandemic and would go on to jump into a roughly 10- to 11-percent position (relative to 2019) in a scant five years.
These data indicate the numbers of print books on the Italian market between 1988 and 2023. Values are expressed in numbers of titles and in percentages. Increases are relative to 1988. Source: AIE Research Department on IE-Informazione editorial data
In the chart above, we see only print titles produced by the Italian market between 1988—the year of the first Frankfurt guest of honor appearance by Italy—and now. In the next chart, we add some data on digital formats.
This chart uses cover price sales between 1988 and 2023, by format. Values are expressed in millions of euros and in percentages. Increases are relative to 1988. Source: AIE Research Department using multiple sources
Of interest in the above chart is the gradual addition to the Italian market of audiobooks in 2011 and then ebooks, represented in 2015.
The Number of active publishers operating in Italy between 1988 and 2023. Increases are relative to 1988. Source: AIE Research Department on IE-Informazione editorial data
With an increase of almost 130 percent in terms of publishers operating in Italy now over the year of its first guest of honor appearance at Frankfurt in 1988, is partly supported by the industry’s work on developing “the habit of reading” among Italians.
Today, counting publishers whose annual sales are less than €100,000, there are as many as 5,000 publishers working in Italy, with some 84,000 new print titles published each year to support a longtime catalogue of at least 1.4 million items.
The Italian market has more than 3,000 physical bookstores in operation.
The original version of Bruno Giancarli’s special preparation for us of these statistics from the Italian Publishers Association was published in 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair Magazine, which is now available in its digital edition here. The editor would like to thank AIE and Giancarli for his development of these charts expressly for our report.
Download your copy here.
In our magazine, you’ll read much more of our focused coverage of issues and events in the Guest of Honor Italy program—this article is part of a special section in the magazine devoted entirely to the Italian guest of honor program.
There also are book market trends in Brazil, France, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, and Poland; perspectives on the international rights trade from a number of players in the business; and commentary from independent publishers from Greece, Colombia, and Kenya.
In addition, PEN International president emerita Jennifer Clement speaks to Publishing Perspectives on censorship ahead of the IPA’s International Publishers Congress (December 3-5). There’s also an exit interview with the outgoing IPA president Karine Pansa of Brazil; a wide-ranging interview with Scholastic chief Peter Warwick; perspectives on audio in Italy from Mondadori’s Miriam Spinnato; and much more.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the international trade in publishing and translation rights is here; more on the Italian market and its guest of honor program at Frankfurt is here; and more from us on industry statistics from many countries in international publishing is here.
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