• Share:

In our final excerpt of our 2020 market guide, Selling Canadian Books in Japan: A Guide for Canadian Publishers (3rd edition), written by Mark Gresham and Frank Foley, we share some tips on the opportunities available in key segments of Japan’s imported book (yosho) market.

Imported books make up 3.3% of the Japanese printed books market, and the top three print book exporting countries are the US, the UK, and the People’s Republic of China. Canada has placed in the lower quarter of the top 20 imports for at least the last 10 years.

Academic/Reference/Professional

While accurate data is not available, best estimates are that, in value terms, academic books account for well over half of imported books owing to the large proportion of high-priced specialist titles. Publishers range from small/specialist imprints to larger companies such as Elsevier, Springer/Nature, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), and Oxford and Cambridge University Presses. Canadian publishers represented in this category include University of Toronto Press, University of British Columbia Press, and McGill- Queen’s University Press. Sub-categories include monographs, textbooks, multi-volume, and reference works. By region, the US and the UK account for the lion’s share, with Canada, continental Europe, Asia, and Australia well represented. There are also significant imports of German, French, and Chinese books.

According to Far Eastern Booksellers, the strongest selling disciplines are law, international relations and politics, area studies (especially books about East Asia), and books having to do with sports/the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a hot topic in Japan, and books on the subject are also selling well. Economics and economic history, on the other hand, are not selling as well as in the past. Linguistics continues to do well.

Budgets for academic books are under pressure. One factor is demographic trends. The Japanese population has been falling since 2011, and in 2019 the country experienced a net decrease of 500,000 people. This puts enormous pressure on universities to allocate more of their budgets to student recruitment and retention and, consequently, less to academic books, libraries, and research. The English-language competency of Japanese university students is generally low, meaning that book budgets are being used for lower-level books.

Another factor is the increasing proportion of library budgets being spent on journals to cover annual increases in journal prices. This impacts both Japanese and imported books.

Research funds are also declining. An estimated 60% of researchers receive less than ¥500,000 annually, with 35% receiving less than ¥300,000. Special government research grants (kakenhi—Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research) are still available, but the number of applicants has spiked, making them very competitive.

To further underline the economic challenges of Japanese universities, even HR budgets are being cut, with departing full-time library staff being replaced by lower-cost outsourcing services.

One beneficiary of the increasingly price-sensitive market is Amazon Japan. With lower budgets, academics and researchers inevitably turn to Amazon where prices are lower than those charged by the “traditional” Japanese booksellers.

Bookseller margins are also being squeezed. Most academic booksellers continue to use a mark-up of 1.3 to 1.5 times the original list price and negotiate a discount with customers. It is becoming increasingly common for multiple booksellers to be offering the same title to an institution in a bidding process that, in some instances, results in very deep discounts. Faced with tight margins and competition from Amazon, some traditional booksellers are beginning to examine ways to rationalize their business model and create more value for publishers.

A notable positive development is the growth in new private universities, with 114 opening since 2000. One factor behind this growth is a government-backed program launched in July 2008 to increase the number of international students in Japanese junior colleges, universities, and graduate schools to 300,000 by 2020. As of May 2018, that number was 137,000, with almost 90% coming from Asia.

English Language Teaching (ELT)

The ELT market can be divided into 1) schools (elementary to senior high) and 2) private language schools (PLS) and universities. The school market is large—¥38.9 billion or $CAD467 million—but it is highly regulated and dominated by Japanese publishers. Private language schools and universities, on the other hand, actively acquire teaching materials from foreign publishers. While accurate data is not available, industry experts estimate that foreign publishers sell approximately ¥7.6 billion ($CAD91 mil- lion) annually to private language schools and universities.

The overall ELT market has been flat in recent years, but there are several bright spots. The 2018 Yano Report on the language learning market reports a general trend towards English for communication. There are three notable market segments. One is the company market with companies following the lead of UNIQLO and Rakuten in placing more emphasis (and reward) on English communication skills. This has given rise to a new (fun) type of private language school modelled on fitness training. This began with chains such as “RIZAP” and Study Hacker English, but now traditional language schools are following suit, including ECC, which launched its version called “ENVISION” in April 2018. Another is the high school/university market where universities can now choose from a range of internationally recognized proficiency tests, many emphasizing communication. The third sector is senior citizens learning English to volunteer as guides for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Olympics, or to set off on extended overseas travel after retirement.

Despite Japan’s falling birth rate, the number of children learning English is also seeing growth. One of the main drivers is the introduction of English as a compulsory subject from 3rd grade on as of 2020. Since all textbooks used in the public school system are Education Ministry–approved, there is almost no chance of a non-Japanese-published book being adopted for classroom use. However, this shift in the curriculum also has a ripple effect on the pre-school market as parents wish to give their kids a head start.

While attractive for foreign publishers, the Japanese ELT market is highly competitive and would require significant investment in local content development to make significant inroads. All of the successful foreign publishers—such as Oxford University Press, Pearson, Cambridge University Press, and Cengage—have had established operations in Japan for many years and employ highly qualified editors and sales staff.

Trade/General

There is no denying that the generally low level of English-language proficiency in Japan limits the market for imported trade books. Unlike academics, who are often highly proficient readers (at least in their subject area), most Japanese would not be able to read a book in a foreign language. That said, Japan still imports a wide variety of English and other foreign-language trade books. According to Miyoshi Co., Ltd., one of Japan’s five major importers of trade books, there are two motivations for buying a foreign-language book—even if a Japanese translation is available. One is that readers want to “feel” the story in its original language. The other is the sense of achievement of being able to read a work of fiction in a foreign language, even if only in part, especially after studying the language since childhood. There is also some prestige value to being seen with a foreign-language book while, for example, commuting to work or relaxing in a café.

Japan is considered an “open-market” territory. It is common to find US and UK editions of the same book side-by-side in bookstores—the Harry Potter series from Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic in the US, for example—and at different prices. Arrangements between publishers and importers are seldom exclusive, so it is possible for several importers to bring in the same book and sell according to their own pricing policy. Because many bookstores will not be familiar with the latest hits and trends in foreign trade publishing, importers will often take the initiative and distribute “on approval,” based on previous buying patterns and volumes. For well-known titles, booksellers will order from order sheets.

Hardcover sales are limited. According to Miyoshi, hardcovers would rarely exceed 10% of total sales volume, assuming a lag between the hardcover and paperback release dates. It is not uncommon to see “hardback at paperback price” sales.

To set the yen cover price, importers will typically mark-up the original US dollar or UK pound price by between 1.2 and 1.5, with a typical retail discount of 30%. Unless there are dramatic shifts in exchange rates, importers will maintain that price for at least a year. Importers usually have agreements with publishers that allow them to destroy/ return an annual average of 10% of unsold stock for credit.

Bestselling authors in English—most of them translated into Japanese—include Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsythe, Patricia Cornwell, Stephen King, and, of course,

1. K. Rowling. Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle also sell well. As with the translation market, crime/mystery is very strong.

Children’s Books

The value of children’s book imports in 2018 was ¥3.38 billion ($CAD39.7 million). Children’s books in English are very well represented at a large number of bookstores nationwide. Particularly noteworthy are Tsutaya’s “lifestyle” stores where English books are often interspersed with Japanese titles and even displayed with other categories such as toys and apparel.

According to Ehon House Publishing, however, the biggest segment is elementary and junior high school libraries. Importers such as Ehon House, Miyoshi Co., Ltd., and Tokyo Bookland promote titles and campaigns through specialist library distributor, Toshokan Ryutsu Center (TRC), for inclusion in their annual catalogue of foreign publications, paying a small fee for each title or group of titles. An updated supplement to the catalogue is created three times a year for use at exhibitions for school librarians around the country six or seven times a year. Ehon House also has a showroom in central Tokyo where teachers, librarians, and TRC sales staff can visit and see the actual books.

Representatives of major children’s book publishers actively promote new titles to importers, but the reality is that classic, long-selling titles and series account for a large portion of the market. Some examples are Where the Wild Things Are and other Maurice Sendak titles, books by Eric Carle such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and books in the Curious George and Clifford series, for example. One reason for this is the familiarity of these stories and characters among primary students and teachers. Education Ministry– approved textbooks will often include either references to or partial reprints of titles such as these.

With the introduction of English as a compulsory subject from 3rd grade on as of 2020, books with ELT elements, such as read-along CDs, are selling very well. Collaborations with ELT-related Korean and some other Asian-based publishing houses are common. To add further value to the package, the importer will often add a Japanese-language guide for teachers and parents, many of whom have limited English ability. Supplementary texts, such as children’s picture dictionaries and thesauruses, are also packaged together for library sales.

Find out more about other key segments, major importers and sales channels in the imported book market, and about retail and distribution the Japanese-language publishing market. Download your copy of our market guide today!