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Battle for Japan's e-book market to commence

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© 2012 AFP

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7 Comments
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Oh great, now there's going to be another new device in the hands of the zombies who force me to dodge them on station platforms and sidewalks because they've got their eyes fixated on the tiny screen while they walk.

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Publishers, already facing falling paper book sales, have so far been reluctant to digitise their books for fear that e-books could kill physical sales.

Hey, Publishers! It's about the content, not the "physical" sale! You still get paid for the content, you don't have to pay for a physcial printing, AND it is very hard for consumers to resell their used books to Book-Off after reading. Sounds like a win-win situation for the publishing industry if they embrace this.

If they aren't careful, they are going to find themselves in a situation similar to the recording industry. Had the recording industry embraced an i-tunes like model, with affordable and easy downloads, we might see less content piracy today.

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Excellent news! I've been using an e-book reader for more than five years now and it is just about the best device I've ever loved (I'm saying that as a book lover who prefers reading to watching the idiot box). I don't have to go to Nagoya to buy non-Japanese books seemingly priced in Zimbabwean dollars at Maruzen anymore, I just get my books from online retailers at an amazing price... On Amazon, if you are patient, books are sometimes free for a day or two... that's when you pounce.

My old reader, an iLiad from iRex was really great for work, with its nice, large screen but the price was kind of insane. My new one, a Sony reader, is just perfect for what I do now, and I don't have to recharge it much, once every 35000 page views or so. Love it.

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@Virtuoso, or you can just bull right through them (sidewalks only)..works for me.

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I'm with peace warrior on this one. I brought a kindle late last year and it is just so good. I got the 3G set up with the little keyboard so paid well more than $100 but you make the savings on the books. Recently I was at an airport and browsing around the stores came across two books I wanted to read. Big thick volumes so price was a total of $80 for the two. Brought the pair on my kindle for $26. And I also agree that getting rid of old books becomes a problem after a while. Kindle will be massive in Japan is my bet.

And Virtuoso and icreturns. Chill out boys.

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I remember ebooks in japan about 10 years ago. not so rare. who wrote this helicopter journalist?

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Seriously? You can buy OEM tablets like this for 50-100 dollars depending on the specs, Rakuten is marketing a china made general product in their own package.

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