Readers, publishers and books in Italy have a common characteristic: the short life

Carlo Dossi, who over a century ago left a narrative project on readers in Italy crippled, would benefit and discourage from the Istat report on the production and reading of books. What emerges is the ideal type of a reader who is above all a non-reader – in the sense that 59.2 percent of Italians do not read even one book a year and only 15.3 percent deign to read one a month – and that in the alternative they are readers, given that women take men by a good ten percentage points. For the rest, the Italian who reads lives in the north or in the center (29.5 per cent reads in the south), lives in the city, has a degree, doesn’t go to the library much, is intrigued by ebooks and audiobooks, prefers fiction , and is in turn the son of readers.

However, these are sadly known data not only to those in the sector but also to those who stochastically start counting people with a book in their hands on the subway, at bars, in parks. The most interesting thing that emerges from the Istat survey is that readers, publishers and books in Italy have a common characteristic: the short life. In fact, the data testify that many Italians read as young people, not only through schooling: 54.7 percent between eleven and fourteen years old and 62.6 percent among girls barely of age have read books without obligations or threats from part of teachers. Then, suddenly, the reader seems to die out.

Probably due to the greater burden of commitments between work and family, due to the distance from the daily habit of reading that characterizes the years at school, perhaps also due to contingent circumstances such as the shortening of the eyesight combined with the publishers’ predilection for greater elegance of characters in lowercase. But, in general, it can be deduced that the progressive dislike of reading is also determined by an offer that readers, for various reasons, end up finding unsatisfactory.

In qualitative terms, certainly not quantitative. Here comes the most surprising datum of the Istat report: in the last three years active publishers have decreased by 10.1 per cent but book production has increased by 8.2 per cent in terms of titles, by 3.7 per cent as for copies, by 11.7 per cent as for print runs. It means two things. First, that titles printed in a few copies increase; second, that in publishing – a hybrid activity between humanism and capitalism – there is a ruthless natural selection. It’s not enough to found a publishing house for it to survive on the sole basis of good will, you have to sell. It’s not enough to pivot a publishing house around a brilliant idea if it’s not wide-ranging or has no public appeal. Add to this the tendency of the publishing industry to merge: 2.5 percent of large publishers (who print more than a million copies overall) publish 30.5 percent of the titles; more than half of the 1,534 active publishers in Italy, on the other hand, do not reach an overall circulation of five thousand copies a year and 50.8 percent of them complain of a drop in turnover.

A corollary to this datum, if intersected with the number of readers which remained stable – actually down by an insignificant 0.6 per cent – compared to the previous year, leads to the conclusion that printing more books, in terms of copies or in terms of titles , does not lead to an increase in readers. A saturation has probably been reached, whereby bookstores and websites overflowing with reading opportunities fail to captivate a proudly refractory majority, which should perhaps be considered beyond redemption.

Even books die young: first editions increased by 13.5 percent, subsequent ones decreased by 18.4 percent. This means that a title arrives in bookstores, is immediately dismantled by the arrival of subsequent novelties and is not seen again until it starts circulating in paperback, a fate which, however, falls to a fortunate minority. Considering that over 90,000 titles are published in Italy every year, writing a book is the best way to not get noticed. If, on the other hand, one is reading it, well, then yes, it catches the eye.