According to AIE (the Italian Publishers Association), in Italy e-books represent 4.4% of all the titles published, accounting for a total of 13 million Euro in 2011. This data, presented at the 2012 edition of the Turin International Book Fair, seems encouraging, but the e-book sales revenue is still only the 1% of the total of trade turnover.

No doubt, e-publishing in Italy is an emerging market, full of promises. That’s why the main theme of the latest edition of Turin Book Fair was “Digital Spring”,  to underline the current trend of both contents and business models characterizing the Italian market. The availability of reading devices has generated a new approach to reading, and publishers are trying to maximize the potential of these new tools. This means working not only on interactivity and hypertext, but also on the relationship between authors and readers, creating a tailored product. From the editorial process point of view, this means re-thinking the production workflow, involving new professional skills. Two interesting cases of two “born-digital” publishers can be cited: Quintadicopertina and 40k.

Furthermore, digital publishing has opened a new horizon, especially for small publishers. The internationalizing process is faster: in a global and virtual word, the market is wider the higher number of potential readers that can be reached. This is especially true for the STM  (Science/Technical/Medical) field. For this reason, some Italian publishers, such as SEEd medical publishers,  have started publishing their contents in English language, establishing cooperation agreements with foreign publishing houses and distributors.

In STM publishing, content customization is the emerging trend. This means allowing the reader to buy only the specific part of the book he/she’s interested in, cutting and merging the contents according to his/her needs.

While universities are looking for a new publishing model allowing them to publish and distribute their own contents, new services for readers and authors are born, such as Bookliners for social reading experiences, 20lin.es for social writing, and Zazie in the field of the reading-related social networks.

With the migration to digital publishing, the role of traditional booksellers is still unclear, and should be reinvented.  Some solutions are certainly possible, and implicate the cooperation between booksellers and publishers. For example, SEEd medical publishers decided to add a QRcode to all their press-releases, so that the reader can have more information about the book, read the preview or the interview with the authors and then can visit the bookseller to have a “physical” look at the book. The QRcode  is “virally” diffused where the readers are supposed to be, and the book can be bought online as ebook or from the bookseller as paperback.

Certainly, in the Italian context we still can not talk about a real “explosion” of e-publishing, and traditional and digital co-exist and interact. However, ebooks are leading to an higher level of experimentation and innovation, especially for small publishers, and the market is growing: proof of the pudding is in the eating!