Factbook

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Book Buying

Over a billion books are distributed in Japan every year

[UPDATED: 9-23-2017]

Over a billion copies of books are distributed in Japan every year, according to the Shuppan Nenkan (Publishing Yearbook). However, only 60% (around 640 million copies) of them are actually bought.

The overall Japanese book market, the world’s fourth-largest, peaked over 20 years ago in 1996, and has been steadily declining since. Despite this long term overall market shrinkage, sales of e-books, which are dominated by comic books (mostly manga), are steadily increasing. In 2016, for example, the e-book market increased by just under 15 percent.

In some countries e-book sales have now peaked or are in decline after a long period of increase while the market for print books has stabilized or is showing the first signs of recovery in these countries. Publishers have had to adopt new strategies, and also books printed on paper have become fashionable and desirable again.

This is not the case in Japan, which is still experiencing double-digit e-book growth and declining print sales. The pace of growth still significant. However, it is slowing (it was 30% in 2014, for example), and is forecast to remain positive.

Over a billion books are distributed in Japan every year Posted September 23rd, 2017 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

Over a billion books are distributed in Japan every year

New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets[UPDATED: 7-7-2023]

In 1841 Shakespeare’s name appeared in print in Japan in Japanese for the first time[UPDATED: 6-14-2023]

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By 1905 Japanese people were already buying the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ on subscription and their prompt payment was used to highlight the trustworthiness of the nation[UPDATED: 4-3-2023]

By the early 1900s so many books had been published ‘Explaining Japan’ that one author felt compelled to write a book summarising them[UPDATED: 3-22-2023]

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