The five-day Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino closed on May 13 after hosting some 4,300 professional meetings.
As of Monday’s (May 13) closing events, the five-day public-facing Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino reports that it drew 222,000 people to its sprawling exhibition space of 800 booths in 51 halls.
In line with the current vogue of book fairs boasting huge numbers, the show’s activity level, per programmers, came to more than 2,000 events, including 180 of them classified as workshops at the fairgrounds and an additional 650 events in the surrounding communities. Provisions were made near the end of the closing day for the Netherlands to be the show’s guest market in 2025 (having just appeared in February as the Taipei International Book Exhibition‘s guest of honor). This year’s guest, as Publishing Perspectives readers know, was the German language. Next year, Italy’s southwesterly Campania—Naples is its capital—is to be recognized as the Torino show’s guest region.
Liguria was this year’s region of honor—its capital is Genoa—and it presented 110 speakers, 60 events, and some 500 books released by Ligurian publishers. The German-language guest activities this year reportedly came to 40 events, with some 25 authors involved. German, according to the Torino organizers, is the third most-translated language in the Italian market after English and French, according to the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE).
Online ticket sales grew by 4 percent over 2023, from 80 percent to 84 percent. Buyers younger than 25 made up some 29 percent of the consumers for those tickets, and 61 percent of those buyers are 39 years old or younger. The show saw a rise in traffic from Lombardy, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, and Liguria over previous years.
For further reading: Porter Anderson at Publishing Perspectives: publishingperspectives.com/torino
Photo: In the professional programming area at the 2024 Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino. Image: SILT
