Italian publishers have never attended the Guadalajara international book fair .But the 22^nd edition promises to be a spectacular debut in the Mexican city from November 29 - December 7, 2008: In fact, Italy will be the guest of honour at the event which is considered as Latin America’s main cultural event and the leading Spanish publishing event on the South American continent. Italy will participate in about 60 events with over 70 cultural celebrities best representing the various spheres, genres and generations with a parallel participation in over 30 of the Fair's academic events.

Italy’s participation is promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities, the Ministry for Economic Development, ICE (National Institute for Foreign Trade) and AIE (Italian Publisher’s Association), who have planned a heterogeneous line-up of literary and academic sessions, events, shows, concerts, exhibits and film reviews representing Made in Italy and "italianidad". The literary sessions will mainly be held in the Italian pavilion’s literary café, an expo area covering over 1,500 square meters enhanced by a central double bookstore with over 35 thousand titles in both their original Italian and Spanish translations.

Italian publishers are enthusiastic about the promotional initiative: the strategic goal is to intensify trade relationships with Latin America and consolidate the direct penetration of Italian literature with Spanish readers. And the Made in Italy book industry is looking beyond the Latin American audience to the Hispanic population in the United States. Additional confirmation comes from the following data: if extra-European agreements on Italian copyright exportation are 21% of the total, 7% concern Central and South America, confirming the enormous potential offered by Latin language countries.

In the meantime, 2007 ended with a slight growth in foreign sales for Made in Italy publishing products: +2% annual totaling 40.7 million Euro compared to a domestic market worth a total of 3.7 billion Euro, slightly higher (+0.87%) than 2006. The most exported Italian books deal with art, image and design representing Italian publishing excellence.

About 60 Italian publishers will attend the Mexican fair representing all literary genres. The large delegation of publishers, both small publishing houses and large corporate groups, will participate in an intense schedule of individual and targeted sessions with Spanish, Mexican and other publishing houses to promote direct exchanges and identify distribution channels in Mexico and Latin America. Partners were selected according to publication affinity. The sessions will be held between Monday, December 1 and Wednesday, December 3, the fair days expressly dedicated to sector "professionals", at the "Circulo de Editores" in the Italian pavilion and in the fair's "Rights Center". The Italian pavilion will host two important bilateral sessions on professional and business relations between the two countries to compare the publishing markets in Italy and Mexico and study the impact of new publishing technologies in the two countries.