Book market in decline in 2024, but Italians are growing (especially romance)

According to Prime, the book market in Italy is in decline give AIE (Italian Publishers Association) for 2024. In the first three months of the year, Italian miscellaneous publishing, i.e. novels and essays sold in physical and online bookstores and in large-scale distribution, recorded a decline compared to the first three months of 2023.

This is 4.1% in value, with sales at a cover price of 357.2 million euros. As regards copies, the decline was 4.8%, with sales of 23 million copies. Compared to the first three months of 2019, reference for the pre-pandemic period, the increase is instead 16.5% in value and 13.1% in copies. Looking at the percentages, various publishing fell by -2.2% compared to the data for the first months of 2023, but still recorded strong growth compared to 2019: 15.1%.

The numbers were released at the AIE conference at Turin Book Fair; these are data reprocessed by the research office of the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) based on surveys by Nielsen BookScan, updated monthly and available online on the Studies and research page of the AIE website. According to AIE president Innocenzo Cipolletta, this indicates that “Italian publishing is a solid industry that has largely stabilized post-pandemic growth”, but still has elements of fragility: “we will understand in the coming months whether the minus signs we see in this first part of the year will be expanded, and to what extent, by the disappearance or modification of measures to support demand such as the special fund for libraries and the Culture and Merit Cards” adds Cipoletta “certainly ours remains a country where people still read too little and which is characterized by strong inequalities in reading rates, especially between North and South, a topic on which strong public intervention is needed”.

Bookshop sales are growing

According to the IEA survey, the libraries physical ones are in first position as a sales channel, with a share of 54.8% of total sales, compared to a minimum of 49.6% reached in 2021 (they were at 65.9% in 2019). Large-scale organized distribution continues to decline and is now at 4.5%.

The success of Italian authors

Another interesting fact, and one that goes against the market average, is the success of Italian novels. Out of 445.3 million euros of cover price sales in physical and digital bookstores (excluding large-scale distribution), 250.2 million come from the sale of books by Italian authors (+1.3% compared to 2023), 195, 1 million euros are for books by foreign authors (-5.6%). Italian fiction grew by 8% and foreign fiction by 3.1%. Books for children and teenagers fell by 3.1%, manuals by 3.9%, specialized non-fiction by 4.1%, general and popular non-fiction by 5.7%, and non-fiction by 11.1%. comics (which however grew by 161.8% compared to 2019).

The success of Italian romance authors

The numbers for romance are significant: books written by Italian authors grew by 48.7%, reaching 52.6% of the total, while sales by foreign authors fell (-15.5%). Overall, romance grows by 9.3%.

The ten best-selling titles of 2024 (January 1 – April 20)

1. The horizon of the nightG. Carofiglio, Einaudi (February 2024)

2. A wild animalJ. Dicker, The Ship of Theseus (March 2024)

3. Giving lifeM. Murgia, Rizzoli (January 2024)

4. All the details in the newsA. Manzini, Mondadori (January 2024)

5. The postmanF. Giannone, North (January 2023)

6. Between silence and thunderR. Vecchioni, Einaudi (February 2024)

7. Dear Giulia. What I learned…G. Cecchettin, M. Franzoso, Rizzoli (March 2024)

8. Endless Love. Love me love meStefania S., Sperling & Kupfer (February 2024)

9. Black HeartS. Avallone, Rizzoli (January 2024)

10. Israel and the Palestinians in a nutshellM. Travaglio, PaperFIRST (November 2023)