Sony has just announced a partnership with Toppan Printing, KDDI, and The Asahi Shimbun Company to start a joint venture focusing on the eBook distribution business. This ventrue should begin by 1 July 2010, and they expect it to grow into an ebook distribution company with a functioning distribution platform by the end of the year. They’re planning to make this a common platform that will work with all of Japan’s publishers.
This is very good news because right now there is no ebook market in Japan. The lack of a distribution platform was one of the things holding it back.
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“Right now there is no ebook market in Japan” is not true. There are some sites selling ebooks, and there is a couple of common formats. Even more popular are ebooks and manga for cell phones. The big publishers are underrepresented, but I don’t think that warrants saying that there is “no market”.