In a shift of consumer patterns, in the first 16 weeks of the year, 47 percent of Italy’s trade book sales, both in fiction and nonfiction, took place online. In the same period of 2019, only 26.7 percent of those sales were made online. Like France, Italy is a market that buys its books in normal times primarily through physical stores, and some observers wonder if the move to online commerce during the pandemic will permanently change consumer behavior. – Publishing Perspectives