07-01-2012, 06:26 AM | #16 |
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07-03-2012, 07:26 AM | #17 |
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http://publishingperspectives.com/20...arket-in-2012/
Push Comes to Shove: Japan’s E-book Market in 2012 Secondly, of course, Amazon. In Japan, like elsewhere, Amazon is loved as much by consumers as they are disliked by Big Publishing. The latter wishes to extend fixed pricing from printed books to e-books and fears a loss of control should Amazon get their hands on digital publications on wholesale rather than agency terms. Nearly three years have passed since The Japan Times reported that Amazon was aiming to work closely with Japanese publishers for a “win-win situation.” Still no local Kindle store. . . . On the contrary, if Japanese publishers continue to pursue a ‘neither in, neither out’ approach to e-book publishing, they themselves will have forced the hand of product managers at Kobo, Kindle and other foreign entrants. The newcomers will have no choice but to seek out content, establish their own publishing arms and aggressively court the next generation of authors. I would hazard a guess that most of the resulting publications would be digital only. When push comes to shove Japanese publishers can nurture these new entrants as sales channels or force them to become outright competitors. Which will they choose? ----------------------- The author of the article mentions "fixed price" of print books in Japan, is that true? Is it kinda like the fixed price of books in France, Germany and Spain? |
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07-03-2012, 07:53 AM | #18 |
Wizard
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Japanese usually get screwed on pricing and I blame the Japanese people for that for not having a strong bone in their body to stand up to shit like that. They gladly fork out whatever is being asked for a product even if it is ridiculously over-priced. Japanese publishers don't want to change because they have no reason to change. They've got a great thing going and they don't want anyone to screw it up.
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07-03-2012, 08:09 AM | #19 |
Wizard
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Looking at the Rakuten website, Kobo is ranked #1 and 2 in the rankings (black and silver)
Good for them! I really hope they take Japan by storm. |
07-03-2012, 08:28 AM | #20 |
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I'm not sure how it's legally organized, but yeah, there isn't book discounting in Japan, in my experience. The price of the books is fixed.
However, a lot of books come out in softcover first (especially for genre fiction), and there's a fairly robust used book system, so most books can be had at a lower price if you're willing to go preowned. |
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07-08-2012, 10:25 PM | #21 |
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Now Japanese people won't need to have their books wrapped in paper, so no one can see what they are reading on the train.
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07-08-2012, 11:43 PM | #22 |
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the success of KOBO and Kindle will depend on two things
1) price of e-reader (I would rate this as "very good" since e-reader is not expensive now) 2) content (we will find out in the coming months how many Major Publishers stay out) Imagine when Itunes/Spotify debuted, it lacks music from half of the Major Labels. Or when Kindle debut, it lacks ebooks from 3 of the Big 6 Publishers. That would put a significant dent on adoption. |
07-09-2012, 01:27 AM | #23 |
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Sony's eBook store already have titles from some of the larger publishing houses, the Japanese books aren't exactly in epub format, but it is something closely related (Calibre doesn't recognize those files). Unless Sony have written exclusivity into their deals, all those titles should be easy to port to Kobo. I'm sure Amazon has the resources to port them to KF8 as well. Kobo is priced under the Sony PRS-T1, I'm fairly sure Kindle will have the same price point.
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07-09-2012, 07:51 AM | #24 |
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I wonder. The Kindle is priced at $140 for Canadians. $100 for a Kindle in Japan would be amazing considering that Japanese tend to get screwed on pricing. Kobo should have a decent headstart over Kindle.
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07-11-2012, 12:32 AM | #25 |
K. C. Lee
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During my time in Tokyo, I worked around this issue by adopting what many people did -- 立ち読み.
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07-11-2012, 12:37 AM | #26 | |
Basculocolpic
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Quote:
For those that don't read Japanese 立ち読み reads "tachiyomi" and is a Japanese custom of hanging around book stores and reading while standing there, used to be very popular, especially the Lolita section. |
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07-12-2012, 11:51 PM | #27 |
K. C. Lee
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Sorry about the Japanese words, and thanks for the translation. I was interested in computers and business books, but many of them were very expensive.
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