(ANSA) - ROME, JANUARY 28 - The book market is growing strongly in 2021: various publications (printed fiction and non-fiction books sold in physical, online and large-scale distribution bookstores) reached € 1.701 billion in sales at a cover, for 115.6 million copies (18 million more in 2020), registering respectively + 16% and + 18% compared to 2020. Italy is confirmed as the sixth publishing in the world after the USA, China, Germany, UK and France is the fourth in Europe.
The growth of 16% of the Italian market is second in Europe, ahead of Germany and the United Kingdom, and behind only France, recovering after the decline in 2020, and Spain.
The race for audiobooks continues, rising from 17.5 million euros (value of subscriptions) to 24, up by 37%.
Adjustment for e-books that after the boom of 2020 retreat by 11% to 86 million.
The market value of the varies, reaches 1.811 billion (plus 14%) if we also take into account audiobooks and e-books.
The data of the market analysis carried out by the Offices of the Italian Publishers Association, in collaboration with Nielsen BookData, were presented at the final day of the XXXIX School Improvement Seminar for Librai Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri which took place online on January 28, 2022.
And online bookstores are still growing, passing - according to AIE's elaborations on data from different sources - from 632.96 million sales at cover prices to 739.93 million.
Physical bookstores, which had lost nearly 200 million sales in 2020, recover part of the ground in 2021 to reach 876 million.
Large-scale distribution still drops to 85.1 million.
(HANDLE).