“We have set up the table in the ministry to write a law by the end of the legislature that integrates with those already approved and already in force, to help the book and all the professionals of the supply chain, as happens in the cinema”. The system provision was announced on March 31 by the Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini at the presentation of the White Paper on Reading and Cultural Consumption in Italy (2020-2021), photograph on reading in the year of the pandemic wanted by Cepell, the Center for books and reading, and created between May 2020 and January 2021 by the AIE, the Italian Publishers Association.
The data illustrated by Giovanni Peresson of the AIE research office confirm the anticipations of December: after the decline in the lockdown, in 2020 the number of readers in Italy rose by 3.8% between May and October, arriving – for print only – to an audience of 24.9 million people, 55% of the population aged between 15 and 74, a figure in line with the previous year. However, if ebooks and audiobooks are also considered, Italian readers at the end of the Covid year grew significantly, reaching 27.6 million (61 percent of the population), with a +5.3 percent compared to May and a similar growth rate compared to 2019. The reading “diet” also changes: digital-only readers or readers who combine printed books with digital ones go from 20 to 32 percent. Overall, between print books, ebooks and audio books, the market grew by 2.3 percent in 2020. And the trend continues in the first eight weeks of 2021, with a 25 percent increase in sales of printed books alone. . A datum «not episodic, but structural», Franceschini comments. “Also because this growth is not common to all countries but it is an Italian peculiarity”. A good result due, according to the minister, to the recognition of the book as an “essential, indispensable good”, with bookstores open during confinement and now in the red areas. But also to support measures, including the “new law, also appreciated in the rest of Europe, which provided 30 million for state libraries for the purchase of books tied to local libraries”.
One year after the law 15/2020 on the promotion of reading, yesterday’s online meeting, moderated by Paolo Conti of the «Corriere della Sera», was also an opportunity to take stock.
Between 30 million for 18Apps (the culture bonus for eighteen-year-olds), 15 for the refinancing of the Culture Card, 10 for small publishers, 12 for tourism and art publishers, 10 for tax credits for bookstores and 5 for translators. “The law has led the book industry to work together and this is positive,” says Flavia Piccoli Nardelli, leader of the Pd group in the Chamber’s Culture Committee.
“This period of transformation has registered a small and partial inversion of trend: reading, in a flood of digital offers, has proved to be a strong and stable activity”, underlines Marino Sinibaldi, president of Cepell. “Readers exist. And they look in books for a way to put order to the many questions of this moment ». For this year, the Center has around 35 million available, between ordinary and extraordinary funds with restricted use. Angelo Piero Cappello, director of Cepell explains: «Support for the entire supply chain, with tenders for bookstores, libraries, the third sector, small publishers, book capitals, translations. And, again, funding for the variety of the offer and promotion, with reading in schools or the fight against cultural poverty ».
The White Paper shows how the sector has reorganized rapidly, with an increase in digital production (+9 per cent) and with a doubling of digital library lending. However, there are still strong criticalities: 61 percent of Italian readers, albeit improved, still put us far from 92 percent of French readers, 86 of the United Kingdom, 69 of Germans or 68 percent of Spaniards . “From a European point of view, however, Italy this year was seen as a model for the policies implemented and the reactions of all the components”, explains Ricardo Franco Levi who in addition to being president of AIE is also vice president of the Federation of European Publishers. «The support measures must become structural: they are aid to support the possibility of Italians to get to reading. There are still too many differences between northern and southern Italy ».
April 1, 2021 (change April 1, 2021 | 10:41)
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