A true osmotic love affair has taken off between books and TV series, and in this regard last Friday May 10th at the Turin Book Fair, the Italian Publishers Association AIE, in collaboration with IE-Informazioni Editoriali, have taken the floor by presenting the survey “TV Series, Reading and Book Buying”.
The study examines the sales trend in bookshops and online stores (excluding Amazon) of eight titles that delivered eight TV series: “Gomorra” and “The Game of Thrones” for Sky; “The Man in the High Castle” for Amazon Prime Video; “Il Commissario Montalbano”, “L’amica geniale” and “The Name of the Rose” for Rai; “Suburra” and “Thirteen” for Netflix. The time frame was 2009-2019. The data show clear peaks of sales when the book passes from the bookstore to television. Simply check out what happened with “Tredici”: a 2008 novel that boomed sales in 2017, in coincidence with the arrival of the TV series. Or even “The Game of Thrones” that, independently by its season, ends up spurring the sale even of the series’ first title.
And all this, it must be said, continues into the following months, even after the series was broadcasted. As if – after the TV series effect is over – viewers go to the bookshop to “see” the story from the point of view of the page and no longer of the image.
“For now we are witnessing a phase of integration rather than cannibalization of these two forms of narration,” explained AIE President Ricardo Franco Levi.