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While I do not know, I suspect the profit margin on little €2 and €3 plastic figures plus all the cards, are most probably higher than the margins on newspaper and magazine sales. Nowadays, Italy’s news stands sell a whole range of figurines and cards for Italy’s children.Ĭommercials planted between children’s programmes on Italian television fuel crazes and keep sales high. In the meantime, and to counter falling sales, the main distribution points for Italy’s magazines and newspapers have been diversifying. Others will surely follow, unless they go from print to digital. Il Riformista – the Reformist – is one such Italian paper which shut down its printing presses this year. There have already been some casualties of the technological revolution. Government subsidies keep more than a few of Italy’s many newspapers afloat. Not that many Italians buy daily papers anyway. Wifi will, eventually, become commonplace in Italy, so there will be no real need to buy a ‘real’ paper or a magazine. The internet is starting to take its toll and now the iPad and other tablets are starting to become commonplace, it’s looking as if the days of Italy’s ubiquitous edicole may be numbered. He said it was OK, but that sales were slowly falling. I spoke to the guy who runs our local edicola in Milan a while back and asked him how business was. Italy’s newsagents, and there are no chains like the UK’s W H Smiths, sell newspapers, magazines, books, DVD and often have porn corners too. In Italy’s main cities & elsewhere, they sit on street corners, are to be found along main roads in urban areas, and sit underground in metro stations, or on the platforms of surface trains. More often than not in my experience, these edicole are purpose built kiosks. The edicola is something of an Italian institution. Anyone who has been in Italy for any length of time can’t fail to have noticed the Boot’s legions of news stands or edicola, as they are known here.