The two pe­riods exa­mined (2001-2003 and 2004-2008) have seen an in­crease in the number of pu­blis­hers in­volved in ex­change pro­grammes and pro­cesses. There has been an in­crease both in the number of pu­blis­hers who purchase from ab­road and those who sell ab­road. Ho­wever, there are dif­fe­rent dy­na­mics due to com­pany size that af­fect their or­ga­ni­za­tional ca­pa­city, per­sonnel and thee­co­nomic-fi­nan­cial re­sources available for edi­to­rial pro­jects:

- pu­blis­hers in­volved in sale/purchase ac­ti­vity with for­eign pu­blis­hers: 15% in 2001-03 (381 firms): 21% in 2004-08 (646 pu­blis­hers), an in­crease of + 69.5%;

- the smal­lest pu­blis­hers (less than 15 new titles pu­blished an­nu­ally) in­cre­ased from 10% (196 firms) to 16% (354 firms), an in­crease of 80%. Si­gni­fi­cantly, 3% of those pu­blis­hing less than 15 titles an­nu­ally (2% in the pre­vious study) re­gu­larly sell pu­blis­hing rights of their own books to for­eign col­lea­gues;

- the lar­gest pu­blis­hers in­cre­ased in number from 31% to 45% (from 179 to 388 firms), an in­crease of 116.8%.

Bet­ween 2001/2003 e 2004/2008, the number of pu­blis­hers to “un­der­take tran­sac­tions with ab­road”, i.e. sel­ling and/or purcha­sing pu­blis­hing rights, in­cre­ased from 15% to 21%. This is an in­crease of 6% that by ex­tra­po­la­tion we esti­mate as no less than 270-280 com­pa­nies. In a re­la­tively short pe­riod of time – less than five years – they have un­der­stood that brand pro­mo­tion, and their per­ceived as­sets in terms of con­tent and themes, etc. is cen­tral to their po­li­cies of con­struc­tion and­de­ve­lop­ment of the ca­ta­logue. They do not look only at the do­me­stic market and the pro­duc­tion of Ita­lian au­t­hors. In­deed, they con­sider their own au­t­hors and their own ca­ta­logue as a re­source of value, not only in do­me­stic sales chan­nels(with their cri­tical points and low growth in­dices) but also in­ter­na­tio­nally.

Bet­ween 2001 and 2007 the number of pu­blis­hing houses which sold rights for Ita­lian books and au­t­hors or ac­quired rights for for­eign books grew by 75.1%. This growth has taken place across the whole in­dustry but it has been par­ti­cu­larly marked among smaller pu­blis­hing houses (which pro­duce fewer than 15 new books per year), where the num­bers have doubled (from 191 to 396: +107.3%) com­pared to large and me­dium-size firms (+42.6%). In 2007, 272 small pu­blis­hers bought pu­bli­ca­tion rights from for­eign firms com­pared to 117 in 2001 (+132.5%). 74 small pu­blis­hers sold rights from their own au­t­hors com­pared to 39 in 2001, a growth of +89.7%. Among larger pu­blis­hing houses, 135 firms sold rights com­pared to 86 in 2001, sho­wing an in­crease of 57%.

Among the fac­tors that made this po­si­tive trend pos­sible, we can count an event like the In­ter­na­tional Book Forum (ar­rived this year at the 9th edi­tion) and the pre­sence of the Ita­lian pu­blis­hing in­dustry in the main In­ter­na­tional book fairs, thanks to the pro­mo­tion and as­si­stance of the Ita­lian Trade Com­mis­sion.

The data emer­ging from the re­se­arch con­ducted by Doxa, clearly por­tray how the growth of the IBF (which in­cre­ased the number of par­ti­ci­pants every year, ar­ri­ving to more than 700 re­gis­tered ope­ra­tors from 30 coun­tries), cor­re­spond to a pro­gres­si­vely de­ve­lo­ping trend on the im­port-ex­port of rights sale for the Ita­lian pu­blis­hing com­pa­nies. An ex­ploit that con­cerns the ex­port of Ita­lian rights for fic­tion, non-fic­tion and children books. Con­si­de­ring all this, the Ita­lian pu­blis­hing in­dustry seems able to ac­quire its space in the In­ter­na­tional market in se­veral dif­fe­rent genres. In the pro­gram­ming of po­li­tics of sup­port (even in the ini­tia­tives in sup­port of trans­la­tion), it will be ne­cessary to con­sider these facts.

Eu­rope re­pres­ents the prin­cipal outlet market for do­me­stic pu­blis­hing. Ex­ports in this area amount to 77% of the total (311 titles sold to the German pu­blis­hing in­dustry com­pared to 620 ac­quired; 320 works sold to French pu­blis­hers as against 998 that we have bought etc.). The im­ba­lance which re­mains in fa­vour of im­ports over ex­ports re­flects the great cu­rio­sity, at­ten­tion and en­thu­siasm of Ita­lian pu­blis­hers with re­gard to eve­r­y­thing pro­duced by the great in­ter­na­tional pu­blis­hing in­dus­tries.

The years bet­ween 2001 and 2007 saw a si­gni­fi­cant re­ba­lan­cing in the re­la­tive weight of the va­rious mar­kets. In 2001 Asia ab­sorbed 5.8% of the titles for which pu­blis­hers sold rights. By 2007 this fi­gure had al­most doubled to 11.5%. In 2001 Ita­lian pu­blis­hers sold 19% of their total rights mar­ke­ted  to cen­tral and ea­tern Eu­rope, the Bal­kans and Russia. Six years later the weight of this re­gion rose to 30.2%. Wi­thin Eu­rope, the sale of titles is highly frag­mented, with a rise in the im­port­ance of cen­tral-eas­tern Eu­ro­pean coun­tries. Poland, for example, al­ready in 2003 counted for as much as France or Ger­many, and double the United Kingdom, in terms of titles bought from Ita­lian pu­blis­hers.

Im­por­ting and ex­por­ting coun­tries are to­tally dif­fe­rent: most of the ac­qui­si­tions (60.1% in 2007) come from two coun­tries, the UK and the USA, which are weak im­por­ters of Ita­lian titles (with only 7.7%) while the ma­jo­rity of sales (73%) are made in other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, from whom we im­port only 33% of titles.

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