Publishing: the process of European unification is not yet well defined with regard to the statistics on the world of books.
In fact, each State conducts surveys according to its own principles. As a result, the overall analysis of the trends in Europe is somewhat complicated. This was demonstrated by the Italian Publishers Association and the Norwegian Publishers Association, which analyzed 24 surveys conducted in 20 countries.
The United Kingdom was also considered, along with Norway and Turkey, even though they are not part of the European Union.
The most striking aspect is the total absence of a common definition of \”reading\”.
In some cases, in fact, only printed books are considered while, in others, audiobooks and ebooks are included. In other states, social networks and websites are also taken into consideration.
It is clear that there is difficulty in the global comprehension of this aspect. If some countries also consider social networks and others do not, it is clear that the data cannot be compared very easily.
Even with regards to age, there are issues with the minimum range. In some cases, we are talking about the population over 15 years old. But in others we are talking about the population over 16 years old.
Publishing: there is also a problem regarding translation flows. In 13 cases, in fact, flows are cataloged on the basis of language. While in 4 cases they are cataloged on the basis of country of origin or destination. It is only possible to make a homogeneous comparison in terms of the number of translations in 8 countries.
Furthermore, not defining the language criteria makes it impossible to consider the growth trends in countries where languages such as English, Spanish, and French are spoken in more than one country. Therefore, there is still a large process to be developed in terms of a form of homogeneity in terms of translations.
This is a delicate process that has to take into account all of the different linguistic forms and trends in reading.
