Update: Nate’s questioning BI’s numbers. He could be right.
A recent piece in Business Insider reports that Japanese consumers are crazy about their e-books. On average, they spend nearly twice as much on e-books per capita as the average US user ($86.50 vs $46). Indeed, the US is only in 5th place; Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are numbers 4, 3, and 2.
Of course, the figures don’t tell quite the whole story. Japan considers digital manga to be e-books as well, and the Japanese manga market has always thrived. In Japan, manga accounts for 80% of all e-book sales.
Japan’s e-book market had a rocky start. In 2011, TeleRead contributor Robin Birtle characterized the Japanese e-book market as “waiting for a push.” He continued the theme in a second post a month later, discussing e-book activity at the Tokyo International Book Fair.
Meanwhile, a lot of Japanese e-book users had gotten fed up with waiting, and companies sprang up to digitize their paper books for them. But in 2012, a consortium of publishers got together to digitize one million books to kick-start the Japanese e-book market. At the same time, Japanese company Rakuten bought Kobo in order to bring its e-readers to Japan. (It bought Overdrive just this year.)
It’s interesting to see the difference a few years can make.
(BI piece spotted via Good E-Reader.)
You should not have linked to that site. They ripped off Business Insider. (The chart they posted is even branded by BI)
Thanks, Nate. I’m in the chemo room with Carly right now, but when I get back, I’ll change the copy to make sure that BI get well-deserved credit as the original breaker of the story. Or Chris can. Or perhaps I’ll be able do it from here. David
Update, 12:07 p.m.: Copy just changed. I’ve got to hand it to Dr. A. He’s got great WiFi.