How to Make Books Fly Again

AFTER A PERIOD OF DECLINE, THE ITALIAN BOOK MARKET IS GROWING. THE CHALLENGE FOR PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS IS HOW TO COMBINE PRINTED BOOKS WITH DIGITAL PUBLISHING

by Paola Dubini, Dept. of Management and Technology, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


The economy of music has been irreversibly changed by digitization, while the development of a sustainable digital strategy is at the center of worried thoughts of newspaper publishers. Likewise, cinema, television, and video content in general are counting on the increased availability of online streaming channels, with a resulting change in behavior on the part of publishers and advertisers.

The statistics on Italian book publishing, on the other hand, after a period of decline, are now showing growth in sales of paper books, and stagnation in revenues from of digital publishing. It seems that digitization has only marginally touched the world of books. This would be a wrong conclusion. However, the book industry still follows growth paths still that are still highly influenced by the logic of the traditional supply chain.

First of all, we must acknowledge that we do not know the size of the publishing industry with exactitude, especially the digital one. Certainly we know that book publishing is enjoying a healthy moment, since the number of titles in print is very high, and the number of channels, physical and digital, have increased. According to AIE, the Association of Italian Publishers, there are 906,000 trade titles and 227,000 e-book titles in circulation, but numbers are in fact far greater, since most self-produced titles (from fan fiction to writers’ sharing platforms like Wattpad) do not appear in statistics.

The perimeter of the sector surveyed by AIE decreased by about €1 billion euros in just over 15 years (it was €3.5 billion in 2000 and shrunk to €2.5 billion in 2016). However, considering the exponential growth of products and services that compete with the book for consumer attention, in order to fulfill leisure, information, and education needs (from YouTube to Wikipedia, from video games to social media, to cite just a few examples), the industry's results look encouraging: the book retains its specificity and relevance. Indeed, in the last two years, turnover has grown a little and its vitality has not diminished: every year about 65,000 new paper titles and 63,000 new ebook titles are published in Italy.

Another aspect to consider in the analysis of the dynamics between book publishing and digital publishing is the wide variety of segments within the industry, including professional and trade publishing. Encyclopedias and many professional publications have been among the first cultural products to be digitized. Encarta, the first digital encyclopedia, dates back to 1993; Napster, the first file sharing service for music songs, was started in 1999. In the case of the trade publishing, however, books printed on paper are still predominantly used and the bookstore remains a major retail channel.

Digital publishing has not yet found a strong growth path. Ebooks and reading/writing apps are the main sectoral divisions. In other content areas (think of video games), growth was driven by installed hardware base. When it comes to devices dedicated to the reading of books, e-readers and tablets have a worldwide installed base that is measured in tens of millions and hundreds of millions, respectively, but sales of these devices display negative growth at the moment.

By contrast, in 2016 there were 3 billion of smartphones (and growing) in use and consumer electronics manufacturers are offering wearable devices that don’t lend themselves to book reading. In addition, the content apps market is largely dominated by video games and space for book is marginal. Lack of a strategy on mobile devices is making Wikipedia difficult to access. Consultation on smartphones is simple, but not the editing of entries, which has led to a reduction in the number of online contributors.

In fact, the near future of book publishing seems to be linked to the ability of authors and publishers to operate simultaneously on the two markets: the digital one to identify authors and attract readers, and the physical on to gain visibility and monetize results. This is what Fifty Shades of Gray and other market cases have taught us.