A Study Of The Japan's E-book Industry Development

Along with the rapid advance of digital publishing revolution and against the background of the continuous prevailing of e-book reader and the industrial convergence, e-book has been the key to the traditional publishing's digital transformation at current times. Japan's e-book industry has taken an earlier start for its developed publishing industry. With the development of digital content industry, Japan becomes one of the fast growing markets with its unique feature among the global e-book market. We can take the development of Japan's e-book industry as comparative analysis of the object of our country.Based on the method of "literature investigation" and "comparative analysis", this paper focuses on the research of Japan's e-book industry development. Firstly, it summarizes the general development of the Japan's e-book industry from the aspect of development scale, market structure and development stage. And then, it employs "Diamond Model" to analyze the factors affecting the development and features of Japan's e-book industry from five perspectives which are industrial foundations of Japan's e-book industry, consumption demands of Japan's e-book market, development strategies of Japan's e-book company, government interventions of Japan's e-book industry development, development opportunities of Japan's e-book industry.The mains conclusions are as follows:(1) Japan's e-book market maintains a steadily growing trend, having experienced four key development stages. Japan's e-book industry development lies behind its American counterpart in terms of the total amount and development speed. The new terminal based e-books have replaced the mobile terminal based e-books, occupying the largest share in Japan's e-book industry. The content of e-books becomes more various in Japan's e-book market, yet still centering on digital comic.(2) The highly mature and developed Japanese traditional publishing industry provides development power, content foundation and human resources foundation for the e-book industry. The development of e-book reading devices such as smart phone, tablet computer and e-book readers as well as the development of communication industry internet industry related to e-book industry lay the industrial basis for it.(3) The e-books in Japan are not as popular as in America and Britain. Japanese consumers keep having the preference to entertainment content such as digital comic. The consumption of new terminal-based e-books gets started, and a variety of e-book platforms emerge in Japan. An increasing number of customers choose smart phone, tablet computer and e-book readers as devices of their e-book reading.(4) The Japanese e-book enterprises form the business model centered on the mobile operator in the stage of mobile terminal based e-book. While in face of the new terminal based e-book, they adopt the strategy of "combining vertically and uniting transversely". E-book enterprises employ the tactics "interest alliance"and "market restriction" to compete for the right to set prices with e-book platforms. The development of e-book industry is still in a confusingly competitive initial stage.(5) Different from America and Britain, Japanese government plays an important role in the development of e-book development: they establish a set of copyright protection systems on laws and administrative management of e-book; strategic policy and strategic planning aimed at promoting the development of e-book industry. During daily administrative management, Japanese government provides solid environment and market order for e-book industry via various mean, such as administrative coordination, financial subsidy and financial support.(6) The development of unification of the technology standard, the innovation of business model and the globalization of the world market offer opportunities for the further development of Japanese e-book industry.