Factbook

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Publishing

76,000 new books published in Japan every year

[UPDATED: 2-12-2018]

Around 76,000 new books are published in Japan every year. This compares to 470,000 in China, 340,000 in the United States and 170,000 in the United Kingdom, the top three nations, according to the International Publishers Association (IPA).

Japan is ranked 8th behind Russia, France, Germany and Brazil in terms of the number of new titles published annually.

There are about 1 million books in print in Japan. The number of new titles published each year in Japan is relatively stable, but overall sales of books is falling.

When measured on a per capita basis Japan, according to IPA analysis, is ranked 20th in terms of new books or new editions published per million inhabitants.

76,000 new books published in Japan every year Posted March 22nd, 2017 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

76,000 new books published in Japan every year

Writing about ‘The Lost’ or ‘Old and New’ or Japan ‘Off-The-Beaten-Track’ in English is an enduring publishing trend that goes back to at least 1878[UPDATED: 6-17-2024]

‘The Life of an Amorous Man’ written by a 17th-century Japanese poet spawned the genre now known as ‘Floating World’ publishing[UPDATED: 1-16-2024]

A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem[UPDATED: 10-2-2023]

In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author[UPDATED: 8-22-2023]

Writing about the plight of women in Japan is not a new trend. In the 1870s visitors to Japan were already pontificating on the topic in print[UPDATED: 8-4-2023]

New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets[UPDATED: 7-7-2023]

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