Friday, October 21, 2011

Another Frontier for Kindle: Japan

PublishersLunch
Amazon is moving quickly on their expansion of the Kindle platform into multiple languages. Both the Nikkei business daily and Jiji press in Japan report that the company is close to launching a Japanese Kindle store, "hoping to start the business in time for the Christmas sales season."
Japanese publishers were understandably concerned about ebook pricing, but Nikkei says Amazon has been discussing "a framework in which the timing and scope of price cuts would be discussed with publishers in advance." Japan's electronic content market is already estimated to comprise $850 million, which is considered small since that's about three percent of their total market for books and magazines.
To review, Amazon opened their French Kindle store earlier this month, their second store in a language other than English, after launching Kindle in Germany in April. Kindle stores for Brazil, Italy and Spain are all known to be under discussion with publishers.

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