e-books

Business / Corporate Aug 5, 2020

SoftBank backs 29-year-old’s venture aiming to become Netflix for fiction

by Sohee Kim

Radish’s growing stable of in-house soap-opera scriptwriters conceive new episodes in various genres every four or six hours.

Commentary / Japan May 27, 2020

Stay-home request spurs a reading revival

In many urban areas of Japan, people were recently urged to stay home for weeks on in the fight to contain the spread of COVID-19. Most big bookstores in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto were closed through the end of the Golden Week holidays, making ...

Business May 7, 2020

Online booksellers struggling to meet demand from Japanese readers

Publishers scramble to find new ways of getting books to customers as Amazon focuses restocking efforts and delivery on essential items.

Business / Corporate Dec 26, 2019

Rakuten to sell U.S. e-book distribution unit OverDrive

Major cybermall operator Rakuten Inc. plans to sell OverDrive Holdings Inc., a wholly owned U.S. unit that provides electronic book distribution services. Rakuten announced Wednesday that it will sell all outstanding shares of the Ohio-based subsidiary, which provides e-books to libraries and educational institutions, to ...

National | Regional Voices: Hokkaido Dec 13, 2019

U.S. digital publisher boosts reach of Japanese 'light novels' in English-speaking world

"Isekai Rebuilding Project," a fantasy novel by a Hokkaido-based writer who publishes under the pseudonym Yukika Minamino, has become available to English-reading audiences through a website run by an American digital publisher of Japanese novels aimed at teenagers and young adults. The addition of Minamino's ...

National Feb 28, 2018

Majority of Japanese university students don't read books for pleasure, poll shows

A majority of university students in Japan do not read books for pleasure, an annual survey by the National Federation of University Co-operative Associations showed Tuesday. In the 2017 survey, 53.1 percent of the students said they do not read books, including electronic, at all, ...

National Feb 26, 2018

Sales of digital manga overtake print editions in Japan for first time

Sales of digital manga in 2017 surpassed their printed versions for the first time, an industry research institute said Monday, highlighting a shift in reader preferences. According to a survey by the Research Institute for Publications, sales of digital manga last year are estimated to ...

National Dec 25, 2017

Annual comic book sales set to sink amid dearth of popular titles

Comic books sales are expected to plunge about 12 percent for the year amid a dearth of popular titles and increasing demand for ebooks, a research institute said Monday. Sales of comic magazines targeted at adolescents are forecast to drop sharply, the Research Institute for ...

Commentary / World Jan 30, 2017

How print beats digital in the book world

by Leonid Bershidsky

The book industry is making a convincing case that the printed word remains profitable.

Business Oct 19, 2016

Amazon to launch new manga e-book reader for Japanese market

by Shusuke Murai

E-commerce giant Amazon is launching Friday an e-book reader exclusively designed for Japanese manga aficionados, which is sure to disappoint fans of the comic genre overseas. The new device's high-resolution display, larger storage capacity, and faster page-turning abilities make the device "the best Kindle that ...

National Oct 4, 2016

Publisher lodges protest after Amazon Japan deletes over 1,000 e-book titles

The Kodansha Ltd. publishing house said it has lodged a protest with Amazon.com Inc.'s Japan unit, saying the online retailer unilaterally withdrew all of more than 1,000 titles from its subscription-based e-book service. Another publisher, Kobunsha Co., likewise said Monday that its 550 titles have ...