AIE President Innocenzo Cipolletta (credit: Stefania Malapelle).
By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor-in-Chief
After a difficult 2025, the Italian book market is bouncing back in the first months of 2026, thanks to an ambitious €60 million government program earmarked for library purchases.
At the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, which closed on May 18, Italian publishing officials said the country’s “library purchase bonus” was driving book sales through the first four months of 2026, with the market up 3.8% overall, led by 9% growth in Southern Italy. In a release, the Associazione Italiana Editori (AIE) reported that around €35 million of the €60 million library allocation was spent between January and April, primarily benefiting “the most fragile areas and players” across the Italian book business.
“In a difficult year that raises concerns for the future, the library purchase bonus has allowed the book market to grow in the first four months,” said AIE President Innocenzo Cipolletta, in a statement. “This is happening despite declining household purchasing power due to inflation, while rising costs of paper, energy, and transportation are squeezing company margins. The bonus has its greatest impact on the businesses and regions that need support the most: for this reason, we hope it will be confirmed and made permanent starting in 2027.”
The Library Bonus
Citing a market analysis produced by the AIE Research Office (based on NielsenIQ BookData and other sources) and presented at Salone Internazionale del Libro last week, Cippoletta said that fiction is growing, while nonfiction continues to lose ground.
“Compared with 2019, nonfiction is down 11%, while academic publishing performed even worse,” Cipolletta said. “We believe the country needs to refocus on copyright, transparent dissemination of knowledge based on verified sources, and a model of in-depth analysis and understanding of reality grounded in books.”
According to the report, Italian trade publishing sales grew by 2.5% in the first four months of 2026 compared to last year, with “an additional 717,000 copies sold and €16.4 million in extra spending,” a performance that Italian officials said stands out compared to their European neighbors: The German market fell by 4.9% and the French market is off by 1.5%, the report notes. But AIE reps cautioned that the current sales push, fueled by the library bonus, “will not be repeated in the second half of the year.”
The library bonus also appears to have had an impact on independent bookstore sales. “Within physical bookstores, independent bookstores performed particularly well, increasing unit sales by 11.3%,” the AIE report noted, amounting to an additional 448,000 copies, and “accounting for more than half of overall market growth.”
AIE said Southern Italy accounted for 31% of the library fund expenditures, while representing 19% of total national trade market sales.
AIE reps also noted that book prices in Italy were up about 1.2% over the same period last year, but were still well below the overall inflation rate of 2.8%, which, the group stressed, “underscores the pressure on publishers caused by an unfavorable macroeconomic environment and reduced household spending capacity.”
Among genres, comics showed the strongest growth (up 14%), followed by foreign fiction (up 9.4%); children’s and YA books (up 9%), and Italian fiction (up 7.2%). Within fiction, genre fiction ( up 9.6%) outperformed literary fiction (up 7%) in the first months of 2026, with romance leading the way, surging 20.3%.
But the “across the board” decline in nonfiction has become a cause for concern. “The nonfiction downturn is a long-term trend: since 2019,” the AIE release noted, adding that “fiction genres have grown by 31%, while nonfiction has lost 11%.”
The full presentation is here.
A list of the top 10 Italian bestsellers through the first four months of 2026 is here.
About the AuthorAndrew Albanese