It was inaugurated yesterday in New York at the Jacob K. Javitis Center “BookExpo America”, the leading professional publishing fair in the USA, in which publishers from all over the American continent and Asian countries participate every year, and which sees the participation of the excellence of Italian publishing until 1 June.
About this the ICE – Agency for the promotion abroad and the internationalization of Italian companies organized the collective participation of 23 Italian publishing houses in the national pavilion: large and small publishing houses ranging from art and history, to children's publishing, from fiction to literature, to texts for teaching the Italian language, to scientific and university texts. With the presence of Italian publishers at "BookExpo America", the ICE Agency, through a specifically dedicated task force in Chicago, aims to promote Made in Italy publishing, in what is considered the largest publishing market in the world, thus allowing the participating Italian publishing houses to sell the rights to their titles and to enter into collaboration and distribution agreements.
The initiative, carried out in collaboration with the AIE - Italian Publishers Association, falls within a special year, theYear of Italian Culture in the USA. The North American market is still worth 4,4% of our rights sales: this is not just an Italian weakness but a phenomenon that concerns all the countries of continental Europe, outside the Anglo-Saxon world. The situation is different for graphics and illustrators, who are generally in great demand, and purchases from the USA by Italian publishers, always very substantial (38% of the total). The promotion of Italian publishing in the USA, in addition to relying on the activity of the Publishing Task Force at ICE Chicago, is supported by the site http://www.italbooks.com/, created to respond to the potential interest of the American market, with a view to continuing to ensure the presence and growth of publishing products in the USA.
