Ottobre 2024 ENG

Italy, Guest of Honour 2024

Thirty-six years ago Italy was Guest of Honour in Frankfurter Buchmesse for the first time and 50 million books were bought in our country every year for a total of 361 million euros. Today, we return to the fair in this guise with 112 million copies sold, more than double, and a value growth of 110% net of inflation. The Italian publishing industry has become the fourth largest in Europe, a publishing industry open to the world, with thousands of translation rights bought and sold abroad every year.

In preparing for the appointment with Buchmesse 2024, in the years leading up to this moment, our first objective has always been to tell the story of the modern, solid, future-oriented ‘Italy of books’ we have become in the meantime. A publishing market capable of interpreting the country's changes with its authors and publishers. And capable of accompanying them through a free and continuous exchange of ideas.

The exchange of ideas was also the principle that guided us in the preparation of our programme at the Buchmesse, taking on board the suggestions of the publishers as well as those of the writers, sometimes even critical ones, who asked and obtained to integrate the agenda with meetings that thematised the relationship between literature and power.

If those who are in Frankfurt will see, are seeing, this ‘Italy of books’ plastically represented in the spaces, the programmes, the publishing houses, the authors who substantiate the participation of our country as Guest of Honour, with this issue of Giornale della Libreria we want to speak to those who are experiencing the fair in person and to those at home, and perhaps to those who will read us in a few decades looking for a trace of the appointment.

The opening of the issue is provided by the voices of the institutional figures who have cooperated on this journey. Then we continue by completing the interesting comparison undertaken in the May issue, thanks to the AIE Research Department, aimed at reading today's publishing industry in continuity with that of 1988. After investigating the main indicators, we now focus on the best-selling titles of 36 years ago in comparison with those of today, questioning what they tell us about the country we were and are.

At the centre of the issue we have the supplement entitled Italy of books. A tale in figures. A map that briefly presents the numbers describing the main features of our book market today. The enterprise of narrating the entire Italian publishing scene, its cultural articulations, its history, we leave instead to the recently published Rapporto sullo stato dell'editoria in Italia 2024.

If the journey that takes us to Frankfurt today started 36 years ago, with Gian Arturo Ferrari and Eva Ferri we have tried to imagine where this same journey will take us in 36 years more: who will be reading Italian publishing, where it will be translated, where it will be scouting. Above all, who will write it?

Finally, the October issue closes with the suggestions of those who welcome and host us at this wonderful fair, the Frankfurter Buchmesse team, with their ten events, places to visit and appointments not to be missed during these days.