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.
National Jul 2, 2020
Demand for library e-book rental services surging in Japan amid pandemic
The total number of e-books borrowed in May from libraries operated by one service provider shot up fivefold from a year before.
Commentary / Japan May 27, 2020
Stay-home request spurs a reading revival
by Takamitsu Sawa
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
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 ...