Italian Publishers Association: cultural and economic growth begins with books

TheItalian Publishers’ Association (AIE) presented to institutions its proposal for the System Law on the Book Industry and the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (PNRR). “Our proposal,” said AIE President Ricardo Franco Levi, “aims to be a responsible contribution to an overall project for the country’s growth, a growth that can only come through culture and education, real strategic assets for a sustainable and lasting development that aligns our country with the rest of Europe while reducing territorial disparities.” Among the main points, ensuring equitable access to knowledge by allocating new funds for the right to study, supporting the demand for books to make reading grow in Italy, and incentivizing those innovation processes that can make the publishing supply chain more efficient, inclusive, sustainable and internationalized.

For the right to study and the fight against educational poverty, AIE calls for an increase in the Right to Study Fund to cover textbook purchases for all families in economic difficulty and the simplification of procedures to ensure that funds are really available before September, including through effective information to families and easy-to-use payment tools. Also proposed is the creation of an electronic card for the purchase of university texts to be distributed to students already receiving scholarships, which today do not cover these expenses.

“The growth of the cultural levels of the population,” Levi continues, "rests on school and university education, but to establish itself it also needs other interventions, including the promotion of reading, especially with regard to those who do not have families behind them that are able, especially due to economic limitations, to provide them with adequate access to books." Therefore, with regard to supporting demand and stimulating reading, AIE calls for making the measures currently in place permanent and structural. It is asked that the 18App be confirmed and stabilized with an allocation of 500 euros per beneficiary each year. In addition to this, it is proposed that the 16 million annual allocation for the Culture Card (100 euro bonus for book purchases) be stabilized and that beneficiaries be families with children about to start school (5-6 years old), a crucial time for creating readers. The fund for library purchases in neighborhood bookstores activated in 2020 should also be confirmed with an allocation of 30 million euros per year.

Business support, Levi concludes, must be central, and “in coherence with national and European policies detailed in the Recovery Fund, we propose interventions to make the book supply chain even more innovative, green, inclusive and international.”

Regarding innovation, the proposals concern incentives for digitization of publishing catalogs; for the production of content, tools and platforms for digital education for schools and universities; for efficiency of distribution logistics (a key element to sustain competition from large e-commerce platforms); for the processing of bibliographic and commercial data along distribution chains (publishers/promoters/distributors/wholesalers/bookstores); for artificial intelligence applications at the different stages of book production, distribution and promotion; for copyright management, also to address the challenges posed by the implementation of the Copyright Directive and the Digital Single Market; and for technologies to combat growing digital piracy.

On the sustainability side, AIE calls for a tax credit for the use of paper from environmentally sustainable forests as a means of supporting businesses in the green transition. On that of accessibility, a support for publishers’ digital productions in order to increase the availability of e-books and other resources natively accessible to the disabled, starting with the blind and visually impaired on whom the LIA Foundation, formed by AIE and the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired (UICI), has acquired a consolidated and recognized leadership on a European and global scale.

Finally, on the internationalization side, main tools on which the Italian book industry relies are translations and coeditions, which in turn are enabled by the buying and selling of copyrights. Therefore, AIE calls for: increase funds for translations of Italian books abroad, also making the procedures for accessing them more effective; create a Fund for Italian translations that, by incentivizing interchanges with foreignabroad, would allow strengthening the international presence of Italian publishing; support the presence of Italian publishing abroad and the system of book fairs in Italy, which have always been useful showcases of Italian publishing for foreign publishers.

Italian Publishers Association: cultural and economic growth begins with books

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.