The Digital Reader

Impress R&D (summary translated from Japanese) released a report yesterday on the Japanese ebook market. They found that ebook sales rose 23.7% in 2009 to 57.4 billion yen from 46.4 billion yen. (from $527m to $652m). That also predicted sales for 2014, but I’m giving the predictions the attention they deserve (none).

If you’re looking at the %23.7 and thinking it’s low, you’re looking at the wrong number. Look at the total sales. $652 million is nearly twice what the AAP reported for the US market for 2009. Japan had a bigger ebook market even though they have only 40% the population.

The %23.7 growth could have 2 causes. The Japanese ebook market might be more mature than the US one or the US growth could be attributed to all the media attention generated by the e-reader hardware companies. Japan doesn’t have the e-reader market that we have in the US; most people read on their cell phone.

via Actuallitte