Italy’s publishers see online retail receding as physical stores reassert their prominence in the market’s book sales.
In its recent report on book retail, the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE) has found that online bookstores are seeing a drop in sales in Italy, while physical retail points are reasserting themselves as the market’s key outlet, accounting for sales of more than half of all trade books in fiction, nonfiction, and reference.
Even so, Ricardo Franco Levi—AIE president, Federation of European Publishers vice-president, and Rome’s special commissioner for the 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse Guest of Honor Italy program—is signaling that the Italian industry faces “a difficult economic context in the post-pandemic era. The challenge is to win over new readers.”
For more reading: Publishing Perspectives – Italy Online Sales
