From Publishing Perspectives:
With 107 bookstores worldwide, Kinokuniya’s director of import and distribution, Hiroshi Sogo, gives us his international bookselling insights.
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PP: How is the market in Japan at the moment?
HS: Tough as ever. A long decline since 1997 hasn’t hit the bottom as yet. Total sales have declined to half of what they were in 1996.
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PP: What’s the balance between digital and print in Japan?
HS: Digital is around 14 percent and print 86 percent. Basically, print continues to decline while digital grows.
Around 90 percent of digital is represented by comic and manga content. There was rampant piracy of manga content until March 2018 when the government finally passed seminal legislation and the police started to crack down.
That helped the industry to regain what had been lost for many years, and helped digital manga sales for some of the major publishers, such as Shuei-sha and Kadokawa. It’s estimated that the total loss collectively inflicted by piracy is 300 billion yen (US$2.78 billion).
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PP: Why do you think Japan takes a different view from the US with regard to fixed prices?
HS: Historically, the mechanism has been regarded as one of the more civilized, inclusive government policies. It goes back to the era when Japan was rebuilding the country after the war. Recovery of social coherence and infrastructure was the priority.
While ordinary commodities were exchanged in free markets, the government . . . thought that information carried by publications such as newspapers, books, and magazines should be available to all citizens at the same price wherever they were.
When Japan went into a fast economic development drive in the 1960s and 1970s, fixed pricing made a lot of sense. Publishers and booksellers didn’t have to compete on price. There was a strong appetite for news, knowledge, learning, and entertainment. I suspect that there was hardly a soul who had any negative perception against fixed prices up until recently when a new type of Western capitalism started seeping into the social fabric of the country.
Winning competitions became the highest virtue above all else. Then people started to think that fixed rates are a cartel that’s ugly and unsavory. Yes, it’s under pressure and will remain so. I’m not certain if it will survive for long. But the current administration hasn’t shown any specific interest in ending it any time soon.
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PP: What are your thoughts about the future of physical bookshops?
HS: I personally believe that physical bookshops will never die, partly because physical, printed books will never completely disappear.
Digital may continue to grow, but tactile reading will not leave human behavior entirely. The total volume may reduce and as a result, only selected, curated works may be made into aesthetically crafted volumes that attract avid readers and connoisseurs alike.
Those who don’t pay attention to books and reading now will be unlikely to complain when there are fewer bookshops in high streets. Books will have stronger constituencies, where people are willing to support physical bookshops because they value the physicality of books, the curation, the serendipitous experience, the conversations, and recommendations over your favorites.
Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives
He lost me at his estimates of losses due to piracy. Yet another moron equating someone pirating as a lost sale, assuming not only that the people who pirate would have bought at the same level (estimates are about 2% of volume if they had to buy) and that pirated trades = someone reading it. Up to 40% is people who do nothing but hoard and collect, with no intention of ever reading all of it — they have people who were DLing, not ULing, so only for their own use, with enough material to represent 3000 years of reading by a single person.
If you want to argue it’s wrong, sure. If you want to argue it hurts sales, sure. If you want to argue the estimate is $1 for $1 against an original sale, you’re on crack.
The fixed price world is interesting, but unsustainable in a globalized world economy, and also contributes to piracy. Interesting he didn’t make the link.
P.