Publisher protests as Amazon Japan cuts back its KU offering

After underestimating the ferocity of Japan's manga fans, Amazon has made major adjustments to the contents of its Kindle Unlimited offer in the country, while dropping some publishers from the service altogether.

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited all-you-can-read subscription service is far from unlimited in Japan, and bereft of content, the nation’s leading broadcaster NHK has claimed.

Launched in August this year, by September the company had run into trouble with its Kindle Unlimited service, where subscribers paid ¥980 - about £8 - a month for unlimited access to 120,000 Japanese books, manga and magazines and 1.2 million foreign reads.

That month saw protests from Japanese publishers about the withdrawal of titles from the KU service, including Japan's biggest publisher Kodansha, which objected to Amazon's sudden withdrawal of all its 1,200 titles.

Much demand on the Kindle is for manga and erotica (what Japanese calls “gravure-based photo collections”) and bestsellers, said one industry source. As Amazon agreed to pay Japanese publishers a premium when a customer read at least 10% of a book or other content, Amazon may have been piling up an insurmountable bill as manga fans very quickly reached 10% of any manga book or nude photo book -- both popular downloads in Japan-- say industry insiders.

"Such high speed... consumption was not foreseen by Amazon," a publisher speaking on condition of anonymity told The Bookseller.

Amazon removed Kodansha’s titles from Kindle Unlimited on 30th September and 550 titles from another Japanese publisher, Kobunsha, and sharply decreased its “Yomihodai” service, as it known in Japanese (a play on the word ”nomihodai”  -all-you-can-drink) according to NHK.

Kodansha told The Bookseller it was now negotiating with Amazon to bring those titles back and stated that it was “protesting strongly against the unilateral cessation of Amazon's delivery [service]”. To date 90% of Kodansha’s output excluding its children's’ books have been digitised according to the company, offering 9,800 books as electronic titles and 17,000 manga e-books.

But in a statement sent to The Bookseller from Amazon Japan, the retailer denied its Kindle Unlimited offering had been much reduced as claimed. “Specific titles may go in and out of the Kindle Unlimited service,” the statement said.

Meanwhile Japan’s biggest retailer perhaps took some comfort in the successful launch of the first Kindle e-reader designed, ironically for manga consumption in Japan.

Amazon's latest region-specific 32GB  “manga” Kindle Paperwhite e-reader offers a performance boost over the current device, as well as an eightfold increase in storage, according to the retailer.

Other features designed to make it easier for comic-lovers to enjoy manga, include "rapid page turn", which is 33% faster than the page-turning effect on the regular Kindles claimed Amazon, and a two-page spread layout for viewing pages side-by-side. Amazon is now taking pre-orders for the device, which costs ¥16,280 (£127) and is available only in Japan.