The paper examines the available data on the book market and on reading behaviors in Italy during2020, also taking into account the international landscape and relevant figures on other cultural consumptions, with the aim of proposing some interpretative hypotheses and analyzing the main trends. As often happened in the past, once again the real data have disproved some forecasts. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been different in different stages of the emergency. In the first weeks of lockdown, despite the increase of free time at home, the propensity to read does not seem to have grown significantly, while the sales figures, due to the bookstores’ closures, led to fears of a collapse in consumption. Things went differently during the second wave, with a strong recovery of the book market: the year even closed with an increase in sales value compared to 2019. However, the radical transformations that are taking place in the relative weight of different sales channels are worrying, with a significant shift from ‘physical’ bookstores towards e-commerce, where Amazon holds a share of over 80%. Among the policies implemented in recent years to support demand and to promote reading, the ‘18-year-old bonus’ proved to be highly effective: between 2016 and 2019 it allowed a large share of the young people who had moved away from reading in the previous years, to return among the ranks of readers.
Il contributo esamina l’andamento del mercato librario e i comportamenti di lettura in Italia nel corso del2020, anche con qualche confronto con la situazione internazionale e con altri consumi culturali, proponendo alcune ipotesi interpretative e analizzando le principali linee di tendenza. Ancora una volta i dati reali hanno smentito alcune previsioni, come spesso è avvenuto anche in passato. L’impatto della pandemia Covid-19 si è manifestato in modo diverso col passare dei mesi. Nelle prime settimane di lockdown, nonostante il maggior tempo libero, la propensione alla lettura non sembra cresciuta in modo significativo, mentre i dati di vendita, per effetto della chiusura delle librerie, facevano temere un crollo dei consumi. Le cose sono andate diversamente durante la seconda ondata, che ha fatto registrare una forte ripresa, al punto che l’anno si è chiuso addirittura con un incremento del valore delle vendite rispetto al 2019.Preoccupano le radicali trasformazioni che si stanno manifestando nel peso relativo dei diversi canali di vendita, con un significativo spostamento del volume d’affari dalle librerie ‘fisiche’ verso il commercio elettronico, di cui Amazon detiene una quota superiore all’80%.Tra le politiche di sostegno della domanda e di promozione della lettura attuate negli ultimi anni, si evidenzia l’efficacia del ‘bonus diciottenni’, che ha consentito nel periodo 2016-2019 il recupero di gran parte dei giovani che si erano allontanati dalla lettura negli anni precedenti.
Roncaglia, G., Solimine, G. (2021). La circolazione dei libri nel 2020: questioni aperte e ipotesi interpretative. AIB STUDI, 61(1), 11-30 [10.2426/aibstudi-13157].
La circolazione dei libri nel 2020: questioni aperte e ipotesi interpretative
Roncaglia, Gino;
2021-01-01
Abstract
The paper examines the available data on the book market and on reading behaviors in Italy during2020, also taking into account the international landscape and relevant figures on other cultural consumptions, with the aim of proposing some interpretative hypotheses and analyzing the main trends. As often happened in the past, once again the real data have disproved some forecasts. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been different in different stages of the emergency. In the first weeks of lockdown, despite the increase of free time at home, the propensity to read does not seem to have grown significantly, while the sales figures, due to the bookstores’ closures, led to fears of a collapse in consumption. Things went differently during the second wave, with a strong recovery of the book market: the year even closed with an increase in sales value compared to 2019. However, the radical transformations that are taking place in the relative weight of different sales channels are worrying, with a significant shift from ‘physical’ bookstores towards e-commerce, where Amazon holds a share of over 80%. Among the policies implemented in recent years to support demand and to promote reading, the ‘18-year-old bonus’ proved to be highly effective: between 2016 and 2019 it allowed a large share of the young people who had moved away from reading in the previous years, to return among the ranks of readers.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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