Within a couple of weeks of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, major magazine publishers and newspapers were already putting out extra editions covering the disaster. The first were mostly A4-size on glossy paper, which made them easy to display in the magazine racks at convenience stores and bookshops.
The most common tag on the covers of such publications appeared to be zōkango (extra edition), with others using terms like kinkyū zōkan (breaking news extra edition); hōdō shashin-shū (reportage photo collection), hōdō shashin zenkiroku (the full record of photo reportage) and hozonban (keepsake).
As of July 8, a search for "Higashi Nihon Daishinsai" (Great Eastern Japan Earthquake) in the domestic book department of Amazon Japan returned 695 hits, including 413 hardcover and softcover books (tankōbon) and 131 pocket-size paperbacks (bunkobon and shinsho). Due to the way Amazon's search works the actual number of titles is not clear, yet the figures are impressive.