In the professional program area at the 2024 Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino. Image: SILT
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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As of Monday’s (May 13) closing events, the five-day public-facing Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino reports that it drew 222,000 people to its sprawling exhibition space of 800 booths in 51 halls.
In line with the current vogue of book fairs boasting huge numbers, the show’s activity level, per programmers, came to more than 2,000 events, including 180 of them classified as workshops at the fairgrounds and an additional 650 events in the surrounding communities.
Provisions were made near the end of the closing day for the Netherlands to be the show’s guest market in 2025 (having just appeared in February as the Taipei International Book Exhibition‘s guest of honor). This year’s guest, as Publishing Perspectives readers know, was the German language. Next year, Italy’s southwesterly Campania—Naples is its capital—is to be recognized as the Torino show’s guest region.
Liguria was this year’s region of honor—its capital is Genoa—and it presented 110 speakers, 60 events, and some 500 books released by Ligurian publishers. The German-language guest activities this year reportedly came to 40 events, with some 25 authors involved. German, according to the Torino organizers, is the third most-translated language in the Italian market after English and French, according to the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE).
Online ticket sales grew by 4 percent over 2023, from 80 percent to 84 percent. Buyers younger than 25 made up some 29 percent of the consumers for those tickets, and 61 percent of those buyers are 39 years old or younger. The show saw a rise in traffic from Lombardy, Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, and Liguria over previous years.
The Aficionado Award Nominees Celebrated
Early in the Torino fair’s run, a gathering was held on May 8 to honor the three nominees for the Aficionado Award. Pictured are, from left, award co-founder Michael Gaeb; juror Aleksi Siltala; award co-founder Rebecca Servadio; Aficionado Award shortlistees Alba Donati (Libreria Sopra la Penna), Frederike Doppenberg (Fifth Wave), and Rita Mattar (Circulo de Poemas); award co-founder Tom Kraushaar; and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli’s Camilla Cottafavi Image: SILT
This year, as you may know, marks the second edition of the Aficionado Award, a co-promotion of the Torino show and Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16-20).
The Aficionado is called by its creators “a unique collaboration between its four founding members to recognize and pay tribute to the people, companies, and initiatives with innovate and impress in original collaboration.” Last year’s inaugural-season winner of the Aficionado was Lola Shoneyin‘s Lagos-based Aké Arts and Book Festival as the 2023 recipient of this honor.
The 2024 nominees for the Aficionado are:
- La Libreria Sopra la Penna, Alba Donati (Italy), a “literary cottage,” once burned and now revived, and its initiatives
- Fifth Wave, Frederike Doppenberg (Netherlands), a magazine focused on the writings of Russian dissidents
- Circulo de Poemas, Rita Mattar (Brazil), a poetry-reading initiative
The jury behind these three selections comprises Patrizia van Daalen (Astra House/Thinkingdom); Karsten Kredel (Ullstein Buchverlage); and Aleksi Siltala (Siltala Publishing).
And those four co-founders of the Aficionado Award are:
- Michael Gaeb, Literarische Agentur Gaeb & Eggers GmbH, Berlin
- Rebecca Servadio, London Literary Scouting
- Tom Kraushaar, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart
- Aleksi Siltala, Siltala Publishing, Helsinki
During the fair, publishing professionals voted on which of the three nominees they’d like to see win the Aficionado Award, that winner to be honored at Frankfurt in October.
More Statistics; 4,300+ Meetings
A ‘read parade’ reported by the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino organizers to have included some 100 people was part of the fair’s early events this year. Image: SILT
The Torino fair’s organizers report that its rights trading center ended up with at least 570 publishing professionals registered from 43 countries, that group including 70 guests of the ICE-supported fellowship.
The program, using online appointment making, registered more than 4,300 meetings between publishers, literary agents, scouts, and/or producers of television and film. The rights center reported the participation of 58 production companies, with a special books-to-screen cooperative engaging German-language players as part of the guest of honor language at the fair.
And the fair also included Sunday’s (May 12) awarding of the 11th Premio Strega Europeo for a novel translated into Italian went to Luciana Cisbani’s translation of Neige Sinno’s Triste Tigre (Neri Pozza).
The Torino fair has announced its 2025 dates as May 15 to 19.
A May 13 fair closing shot announcing the dates of the 2025 Salone Internazionale del Libri di Torino. Image: SILT
A note about the name of this book fair: The show is named the Salone Internationale del Libro di Torino because that’s the Italian name for the Italian city in which it’s located, not “Turin.” The latter is an anglicized version of the city’s name, like “Rome” rather than “Roma.” Our choice to use the actual Italian name comes from the fact that the legally trademarked name of the book fair calls its city Torino, as you can see on the fair’s logo.
More from us on the Torino International Book Fair is here, more on international book fairs and trade shows overall is here, more on the Aficionado Award is here, more on Guest of Honor Italy at Frankfurt this year is here, and more on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here.