According to a report in IBN Live this is the case. Big publishers in Japan are leery of digital publishing:
Big publishers are wary of changing a decades-old business model under which they set the retail prices and discourage discounting. This helps put a floor under their profits and, they argue, protects the country’s culture.
E-book service providers are likely to charge less for buying electronic titles, as they do in the United States, and this could lower prices of paperbacks and dent profits.
“If we can’t maintain paper book publishing, we are not going to cooperate,” said Mitsuyoshi Hosojima, a director of the Electric Book Publishers Association of Japan, which was set up last month to address the e-book threat.
“And if we don’t supply content, they won’t be able to sell e-books,” Hosojima said.
According to the articles ebook readers are not available in Japanese and there is “virtually no market to speak of for electronic novels …”.
Not to argue with the facts related above, but haven’t we also read that Japan is the center of the cellphone novel with more people reading cellphone novels than standard literature? I’m sure I’ve seen this. Can both be true?
If publishers want to protect prices, they should pull an ‘agency model’ rather than close their eyes to the future of books, which is electronic rather than paper.
Rob Preece
Publisher
““And if we don’t supply content, they won’t be able to sell e-books,” Hosojima said.”
No, if you don’t supply content (and demand is there) people will get it other ways and you’ll see nothing for it.
The big battle, I predict, will be over manga, especially when iPad and other (larger) tablets come to Tokyo-town. Manga fans, if they’re like comics fans Stateside, are scofflaws and freedom-fighters at heart, and will have been scanning in mangas for years now.
I don’t know that they have been, but if they have, then the infringed manga will be all over iPad and the subsequent tablets, offering manga publishers the choice of continuing to stonewall ebooks, or getting at least some yen back from a business opportunity.
Since manga publishers in Japan also publish popular fiction and other books, would this lead them to bring those books into e as well? Or would they draw the line on manga?
— asotir
A post before this one should read “ePub (and HTML for that matter) standard resists Japanese text’s complex layout needs”.
With that as a premise, it is really of little importance weather or not Japanese publishers believe in the format or not. They do not even have a decent format to bring their works to the digital market, to begin with.
Note that Japan is the 2nd biggest publishing market. I am pretty shocked nobody is pointing out how standards bodies developing formats for electronic publishing are obviating the needs that Japanese text oblige (or how little implication Japanese publishing parties seem to feel compelled to bring in).
Umm.. I also have to wonder what they’re smoking. When I bought my Kojhinsha 7″ netbook in Japan earlier this year, it came with a free ebook app that has manga, novels and magazines. The shop front for purchasing titles can be found here:
http://www.ebookjapan.jp/ebj/
The iPad is also coming out May 28th, so it should make a decent dent into the market.