Every once in a while, I receive an e-book royalty statement for a book I published once upon a time.

Amazon 6,102 yen
MobileBook.jp 2,489 yen
MediaDo 1,284 yen
Booklive 1,225 yen
Apple 812 yen
Total 11,912 yen
Of those, 51% are Kindle (Amazon)!
Surprisingly few.

More to the point, Japan’s 24% e-book usage rate is way too low! Waste of paper! DX is a lagging field.

China 83% China 83
Korea 53
U.S. 52%.
England 46
German 30%.
Japan 24

Speedy Books currently covers Japanese and English, and is considering Chinese language support next.
Of the world’s 7.7 billion people, 120 million are in Japan. 1.5 billion in English-speaking countries. Add to this the 1.4 billion people in China, and the total is about 4 billion.
These three languages cover 52% of the world. Well, I could do without Japanese.
I think global coverage is also a major condition for a book hit.

↓ March 3, 2020 article

Speedy has decided to launch a new publishing business, Speedy Books.
http://spdy.jp/news/s3519/