Boldly, the Ebook WayPresident, Voyager Japan, Inc.



Junko Kamata

Books You Can Search

ebooks had plenty of shortcomings. But there
were advantages, too. A single plastic discweighing less than 20 grams could hold a libraryof a hundred titles. And its entire contents could
be searched electronically.

Will people read electronic books? What do thebooks need to look like, and how do they need tobe packaged, for people to read them? Whatsubjects and content are suited to the medium?

It’s worth remembering how people acquired
books in those days of yore when the Internet was
still mostly a place for IT specialists. They would
drop into a bookstore to browse on their way toor from work or school, and buy something that
happened to catch their attention. Or they mightsee a book mentioned in the paper and take theclipping to their neighborhood bookstore to orderit, then have to wait ten days for it to arrive
before they went to pick it up. Everything
centered on bookstores. Compare that to today.
We now have only 62% as many bookstores as
we did in 1999 (http://www.1book.co.jp/001166.
html). But has it become any less convenient toget hold of books? Far from it. You can order any
book you want from an online bookstore andhave it delivered to you the same day. You canorder secondhand books as well. You can checkan online catalog to see if your local library has abook. If the book is available in electronic formon the Internet, it can be in your hands within

At Voyager Japan, we have been seeking answers
to these questions ever since the company was
first founded in 1992. We believed that people
would indeed read electronic books. But this waslong before the arrival of smartphones andtablets. We were urging people to read on themachines of many generations ago in computer
terms. Conditions were challenging.
Naturally enough, people often compared theearly ebooks to paper-based books. It’s easy topick up a paper book and flip through the pages,
they said, and you can draw lines to highlightyour favorite passages or write notes in themargins. That’s not possible with ebooks. Plus
you need a special machine that has a low
resolution and looks cheap.
The complaints were endless and we wanted tocover our ears. They were right, of course:

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timeIncumbents treat innovation as a series ofincremental improvements. Their focus is on
improving the quality of their current products.

minimum
customer
need

time

Disruptors introduce new products, but do notinitially appear to be a threat. Their products arecheaper, with poor quality—at first.

2

minimum
customerneedqualitytime

Disruptors improve their products with newtechnology. The flashpoint comes when theirproducts become “good enough” for mostcustomers.

To illustrate, the report traces how digital
cameras disrupted the market for conventionalfilm cameras. Indeed, it was probably whenprinted photos came out looking crisp and clear atabout postcard size that most people decided
digital cameras were “good enough.” Earlymodels had been mere toys, barely managing
prints the size of a business card—hardly anadequate format for preserving cherishedmemories. But with progressive innovation andimprovement, the digital camera achieved thepostcard standard, and that became the flashpoint.
You could check right there on the spot that you
got the shot, and being able to print out your own
pictures at home was so much more convenient.

seconds. The Internet has changed how we obtainand read books.
People all over the world use the Internet, andinformation flies back and forth over it
instantaneously. It has become almost as
indispensable to modern life as the water wedrink and the air we breathe. Most particularly, it
gives us access to more information moreconveniently and more easily than ever before.
People increasingly turn to the Internet to find out
about anything they want to know, anytime,
anywhere. Once you grow attuned to its virtuallylimitless bounty, it becomes difficult to use anyother source of information.

Creative Disruption in the Digital Age

The same pattern is occurring with ebooks.
Smartphones with very high resolution screens
are now in everybody’s pockets and handbags,
carried everywhere they go, and online
bookstores can be accessed 24 hours a day.
Advancing global standardization of file formats
means EPUBs can now be produced not only inthe alphabetic languages but in languages like
Japanese as well. To read a book formatted invertical text you open the cover to the right—justlike a book printed on paper. Books formatted inhorizontal text open in the opposite direction, tothe left. The EPUB standard has made it possible
for Japanese comics to display page spreads inthe order the author intended as well.

For example, let’s consider the news. More andmore people are getting their news on the Web
instead of from newspapers, television, or radio.
In March 2014, a report titled “Innovation”
produced for internal use by The New York Times
was leaked on the Internet (http://www.scribd.
com/doc/224608514/The-Full-New-York-TimesInnovation-Report). It said that for The Times tosurvive, both the company and its reporters would
have to change. Readers now get breaking news
by way of social media and their smartphones.
The Times might publish excellent articles, but
the size of its readership can’t compare to that of
the new digital media. Quicker and moreconvenient news sources are drawing people
away from the paper.

The inferiority of ebooks compared to paper
books used to be something we just had to accept.
But when we look at the state of things today, it’s
clear that that time has passed. The technicalshortcomings have been solved. We are on thecusp of “good enough” for readers.

The report observes that it is a classic case of“disruption,” a pattern seen across manyindustries, which it describes as follows:

A Package of Information

 isruptors introduce new products that, atD
first, do not seem like a threat. Theirproducts are cheaper, with poor quality—tobegin with. . . . Over time, disruptors
improve their product, usually by adapting a
new technology. The flashpoint comes when
their products become “good enough” formost customers.

But how about for writers? Three key advantagesof the ebook for writers are:
1.
2.
3.

The ability to self-publish.
No inventory risk.
Fully computer-based production.

There are other merits, too, but these are the3With the copyright landscape changing in thisway, a number of books have come out explaining
the essentials of the law to creators of intellectual
property. They are written in simple language that
requires no prior legal background to understand.
If you plan to self-publish, please be sure to
consult at least one such book.

characteristics that make ebooks a superior, moreconvenient medium in terms of distribution, cost,and production.
At Voyager, we have recently been thinking agreat deal about the conventional roles books
have filled. A book is essentially a package of
information. Its author identifies something she
wants to set down and bequeath to posterity, andshe wraps it up in this package called a book. In
the process of shaping that package, she creates
something that will have a very different impact
on the reader compared to webpages and blogs.
The author pictures her ideal reader as she writes
and creates the package. If she intends to write
follow-up books, then ebooks with their minimal
costs are all the more suited. If there are elementsthat can’t be expressed to the best effect verbally,
links can be provided to images or videos or othersupplementary materials on the Web.

From MS Word to Ebook in 5 Minutes:“Romancer”
In 1996, Japanese publishing houses were riding
high, with sales of over ¥2.6 trillion—more than
¥1 trillion higher than current figures. Whenpublishers discuss the state of the market and thedecline in the number of bookstores today, theyrefer to that era as “the good old days.”
The process of bringing out a paper-based bookinvolves typesetting and printing the prepared
manuscript, binding the printed pages andpackaging them as a commercial product, thentransporting the physical books to retail stores by
way of a distributor. It is a complex system that
calls for a great deal of specialized expertise, andtypically requires an investment of hundreds ofthousands of yen—or higher—to bring a book tomarket. It is not something an individual canundertake on her own. With electronic publishing,that entire process is eliminated. Since the bookcan be created from start to finish on a personal
computer, the finished package costs very little toproduce. Such ease of publication was—andremains—unthinkable with paper books.

One of the most difficult aspects of producing
your own book is knowing when it’s done. When
you work with a commercial publisher, the editor
goes over the manuscript and gives the green
light. But what if you’re self-publishing?
In a word, trust your instincts and put your bookout: just do it! When you write something with
the intention of publishing, you will naturally feela strong desire to get your ideas into readers’hands. It takes courage to make the call, but you
have to remember that no one can read what
you’ve written until you’ve packaged it as afinished book. Only editors read books inmanuscript form.

As noted above, one of the advantages of ebooks
is the ability to self-publish. By using Kindle
Direct Publishing from Amazon or iBooks fromApple, you can market your book throughout theentire world. But these online services require thefiles to be in the EPUB format. When you’ve
decided it’s time to release your book, you may
wonder how to create the necessary EPUB files.

An important thing to keep in mind when creating
your book is copyright. If you quote anotherwriter, you must give clear attribution, and you
must handle the text in a way that distinguishes
your own words from the other writer’s words. Asof 2015, thanks to an update in Japanese
copyright laws, electronic publications have thesame protections as paper publications. Also,
ongoing negotiations for the Trans-PacificPartnership (TPP) have raised the possibility thatcopyright terms will be extended.

Voyager has developed a web service for
producing electronic books called Romancer(https://romancer.voyager.co.jp). The service
allows you to convert your MS Word files into
EPUB files in three simple steps:
4

1.
2.
3.

New Publishing Communities

Finalize your manuscript file.
Upload the file.
Push the “Convert” button.

With people now definitely reading ebooks,
authors have begun creating electronic archivesof their own titles. At Natsuki Ikezawa’s “impalae-books” site (http://www.impala.jp), over 40
titles have already been digitized and madeavailable in its first phase. When the archive was
first launched in 2014, Ikezawa said, “I like tothink of light and limber ebooks fluttering likeangels in the air over shelffuls of heavy paper
books. I think it’s a wonderful picture. It gives
readers the freedom to choose (http://www.
impala.jp/e-books/about.html).” In 2015, author
Yoshio Kataoka began digitizing his complete
works as well.

When members log in to Romancer, they see a menu giving
access to the “Dashboard,” “My Books,” a “Production Guide,” and“Publication Support.” The page also offers Romancer news andsales rankings.

“Impala e-books” represents the birth of aplatform for authors to connect directly with theirreaders over the Internet. We can see a new
publishing community in the making.

If you wish, you can also publish your ebook
right there on the Romancer site. You will receivea URL, which you can make available to readers
via email, your personal blog, Twitter, Facebook,and any other means you choose. All readers haveto do is click on the URL, and the book will open
on their screens. The system uses the BinB
(pronounced “bee in bee”) e-reader that Voyager
developed in 2011. BinB stands for “Books in
Browsers,” and is a system that allows ebooks to
be displayed in any standard web browser. No
separate application is required.

A number of years ago, Takemaru Abiko,
Yumehito Inoue, and a number of other authors
got together to launch a website called“e-NOVELS.” The objective was to develop andmaintain a platform for authors to edit one
another’s work and self-publish. That particularsite has since gone dark, but there are now any
number of other places on the Web where likeminded individuals have joined forces to create aplatform for publishing what they write.
Among Japanese literary communities on theWeb, the one with the longest history is Aozora
Bunko (literally “Blue Sky Library”; also known
as “Open Air Library”: http://www.aozora.gr.jp).
Launched in 1997 by the late Michio Tomita andothers, it’s an Internet archive of works whose
copyright terms have expired. After volunteers
have entered and proofed the texts, they are madeavailable for free download from the Web. The
library originally opened with just five texts:
Sangetsuki (The Moon Over the Mountain), by
Atsushi Nakajima; Yo ga genbun-itchi no yurai(How I Got Started with Genbun-itchi), by
Shimei Futabatei; Takasebune (The Boat on theRiver Takase), by Ōgai Mori; and Midaregami

Totan-yane no fu–kei (Tin Roof Landscapes), by Chu–ichi Kato–. An art collection
originally published in PDF form was converted by Romancer into an EPUB that
reflows for comfortable reading even on the smallest screens.
http://r.binb.jp/epm/e1_10743_09062015011658/

5

advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Perhaps AI systems will be able to provide us
with the information we need without us evenhaving to look it up—in “think and you shallreceive” fashion. In any case, whatever the futureholds will surely be built on digital technologies
that have reached a far higher sophistication thananything seen today.

(Tangled Hair), by Akiko Yosano—in two
separate editions from 1901 and 1933. Now in its
18th year, the library has grown to over 13,000
titles.
More recently, in 2011, translator and Waseda
University professor Minami Aoyama launched
the Toyama Hon’yaku Nōjō (“Toyama Translation
Farm”; http://www.ttfarm.org). Undergraduate
and graduate students at Waseda are translating
the complete works of American short story
writer O. Henry for release on the site.
Participating students read broadly forbackground on early 20th-century New York as
they strive for deeper equivalence in theirtranslations. Their activities came to the attentionof editors at Chikuma Shobō, and a volume ofstudent translations edited by Professor Aoyama
was published in a pocket paperback (bunko)
edition in May 2015 as O Henrī Nyūyōku
shōsetsu shū (O. Henry’s New York Stories).

I believe those technologies will be driven by thewords each and every one of us spins into
sentences and into books. The vast majority of
ebooks available today are paper books that havebeen digitized, and as a result, many people scoffthat they are merely “print under glass.” Even so,they do have the advantage of being easily
searchable.
And perhaps the greatest advantage of ebooks
will be as a medium for publishing books that failto pencil out as paper books. People who go tosearch engines in pursuit of information will havethese ebooks pop up among the hits. At present,
the negative aspects of DRM (digital rights
management) continue to pose obstacles, andconditions cannot yet be considered ideal, but I
have faith that this will see resolution over time.
Meanwhile, we at Voyager will continue topursue ways for electronic books to be all thatthey can be in terms of the qualities I haveoutlined before with the mnemonic of“EBOOKS”:
Eternity (existing in an enduring format).
Borderless (available globally)
Open (using a non-proprietary standard)
Originality (fostering new and original content)
Knowledge (containing worthwhile information)
Social (connecting authors and readers)
Junko Kamata (1957– ) worked at Pioneer
LDC, where she was involved in bringing theLaserDisc to market as well as the
production of multimedia content, before
helping found Voyager Japan in 1992. She
has produced CD-ROMs and web content,
and has also been engaged in thedevelopment and sale of electronic
publishing tools. She was named president of
Voyager Japan in October, 2013.

The “impala e-books” page of Natsuki Ikezawa’s Café Impala site. This ebook
archive has also become the basis for a Web-based book review contest.

Your Legacy to Tomorrow
Ebooks do not stand in opposition to paper books.
Things that were impossible 20 years ago can
now be accomplished with ease. By 20 years
from now, we are likely to have far more
6

From Software Engineer to Author
Author

Taiyō Fujii“Maybe I’ll Write a Novel . . .”In my first full-time job out of college in 1996, I
had worked as a DTP engineer at a platemaking
company called Vanfu. Relatively few of ourclients were set up for DTP yet at that point, so inmuch of my work the process began withhandwritten manuscripts—which is to say, I had tolearn the entire production process from start tofinish. In 1999, the company was commissioned to
produce graphics for displays at the Japan Air
Self-Defense Force Air Park Museum at
Hamamatsu Air Base, and I was assigned the task.
It gave me an opportunity to experience a major
project through all its components and phases:
planning, reporting, writing, scheduling photoshoots, editing, designing layouts, producing
illustrations, and delivering the final printed
matter. Further, because e-frontier owned apublishing subsidiary, my time there had taught me
a great deal about the book industry from the
management perspective as well.

I was working for a developer of personal
computer software when the idea came to me. It
was during the sweltering hot summer of 2011,
when we were being asked to limit air
conditioning as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant disaster. With the word “radiation”
being bandied about hair-raisingly in the pressfrom one day to the next, I attended a scienceseminar on radioactivity in which a professor
from the High Energy Accelerator Research
Organization (KEK) spoke about the more than
100 years of radiation research that has beenamassed, and a new understanding of the facts
took shape in my head.
I had never studied science. Nor did I have any
training as a journalist. But maybe I could
express what I was thinking in the form of astory—in a work of fiction. And so I beganwriting my novel.

In other words, if I so chose, I had all theexpertise I needed to lay out the pages of myfinished manuscript in pocket paperback (bunko)
form with my DTP program, produce my own
cover art, have the book printed and bound withan ISBN code, and ship the book to retailers
through one of the smaller distributors. But myprevious work experience told me that if I were to
produce a print book that way, it would be a oneshot deal. We live in an age when even the books
brought out by seasoned professionals might sell
only a few hundred copies. I needed a system thatwould let me try, try again.

Book Experience
This was not my first book.
In 2003, I had written a book about Shade, a 3D
computer graphics application, and thanks in partto that, I had landed a job with e-frontier, thecompany that developed Shade. I then went on towrite two more books about the software as an
employee, and I did a lot of other writing in myrole at the company as well—from press releases
about Shade, to promotional Web content, to theofficial users’ guide that was included with thesoftware package.

I quite naturally began to contemplate publishing
my book digitally instead. But this was at a time
when the Kindle’s arrival in Japan was still in therealm of speculation on the pages of The Nikkei
newspaper.

It was not my first time being involved in the
production of a book either.
7

text vertically, and that it supported Aozora
markup for ruby (kanji pronunciation guides) andemphasis dots placed next to characters, as well
as for displaying alphabetic characters sidewise
within vertical text.

I wasn’t especially worried about whether the
Amazon, Apple, or Adobe publishing engines
would eventually be able to handle vertical text.
Because I wrote HTML applications as a hobby, I
already knew that the open source Webkit library
Apple had developed for its Safari browser could
produce vertical text in HTML.

By the time I had written about 4000 characters, I
hit my first stumbling block. Writing an entire
novel in a single plain text file was going to bedifficult. Even though scrolling was easier on my
iPhone than on a PC, it was becoming
increasingly difficult to find where I wanted tomove the insertion point in a file destined to growmany meters long.

On the other hand, the distribution options forelectronic books left a great deal to be desired.
Although Amazon had launched Kindle Direct
Publishing (KDP) for books in its proprietary
format in 2009, and Apple had subsequently
made self-publishing of EPUBs possible throughits iBooks Store for the iPhone and iPad, there
was no telling how many years it would take forJapan’s big publishers to come to terms with
Amazon, Apple, or other self-publishingplatforms overseas so they could open stores inJapan. Canada-based Kobo had not yet launched
its self-publishing platform, Kobo Writing Life. I
knew XMDF was being used in some quarters forJapanese digital books, but there was no
mechanism in place for individuals to selfpublish.

I decided to see if I could find something moresuitable to my purpose, and this led me to checkout a number of novel-writing apps fromoverseas. As I tried out highly rated apps like
Storyist and A Novel Idea, I realized they had a
lot to teach me about the steps, techniques, andframe of mind necessary for writing of a novel, as
well as about the whole culture of literary
publishing.
In one case the app put up a screen that said:

Still, I knew I would be able to distribute files in
the Aozora Bunko (“Open Air Library”) format
for iOS users to read in the i-bunko app. And if I
produced EPUB files, readers should be able toopen and read them in iBooks—though for thetime being only as horizontal text. This meant I
could indeed self-publish my book digitally.

My MasterpiecebyTaiyō Fujii

It made me laugh, but I also realized that that’s
the spirit with which aspiring novelists all over
the world approach their writing. That needed tobe my frame of mind as well.

Both Aozora and EPUB are open formats. I
wouldn’t need any special proprietary software.
And the Aozora format is easily converted to
EPUB format.

Next I was asked to write a pitch. Before
outlining my chapters, before I wrote a single
word of the story, the app wanted me to “sell” thenovel I was preparing to write. It took me a bit
off guard, but the app also helpfully explainedthat it should be something like the productdescriptions I’d seen on Amazon.

That decided it.
In September 2011, I began looking for a plain
text editor that supported Aozora markup.

Given what had prompted my search, it wasinteresting to note that, without exception, theapps divided the manuscript not just into chapters
but into separate files for smaller sections within
the chapters. This was partly to enable easierrearrangement, but the basic idea was that eachsection should be able to stand on its own.

Writing During My Commute
I had a full-time job, so I decided I would write
during my daily commute on the train, and found
an iOS app called iText Pad that I could use on
my iPhone. I was pleased that it displayed the8Of the many things I learned from exploring theseapps, the directive to “clearly define your five
W’s and one H at the pitch stage” is one that I
continue to follow faithfully today. As an aside, I
might note that, later, when an English translationof Gene Mapper was being prepared by
Haikasoru, my editor remarked on how difficult it
is to pitch the kind of linked short stories
Japanese authors and publishers are so fond of: ashort pitch simply can’t contain all the W’s andH’s of all the separate dramas.

From Editing to EPUB
I gave my manuscript to a friend to read, andbegan preparations for the next step while I
waited for him to get back to me.
With regard to when the Kindle might come to
Japan, I still had only The Nikkei’s speculation.
And since I had seen no other movement on aself-publishing platform in Japan, I figured I
would simply have to go it alone.

Who, what, when, where, why, and how are thecrucial elements of any drama, and it’s essential
to have the central drama clearly mapped out inone’s mind before beginning to write. This wasamong the valuable lessons I learned more or lessby happenstance as I looked over the various
novel-writing apps.

My job at e-frontier had exposed me to the ins
and outs of marketing digital content, so I alreadyknew what I would need: the downloadable
ebook files themselves, a payment system that
could accept credit cards, and a website with aunique domain name.
For payments, I decided to use Gumroad, which
had only recently launched. Gumroad said theywould send the proceeds to my PayPal account,and that meant there would be a second fee topay, but against the ¥500 I intended to charge forGene Mapper, the total of the two tolls would
still be no more than ¥100. Gumroad had the best
rates of any payment platform in Japan, it was abreeze to use, and I was especially grateful thatthey did not force users to register in order to pay.
This was a welcome new development.

At any rate, I continued tapping away on my
iPhone during my commute, adding day by day toa growing collection of short sections,periodically exchanging one app for another.
Although I’d actually thought my first effort
would be a short story, I followed a friend’s
advice and expanded Gene Mapper into a shortnovel. In March, 2012, about six months after I
first began to write, my manuscript was complete.
My app told me that the story was the equivalentof 200 standard manuscript pages long.

The purchase screen on Gumroad. Users are not required toregister in order to pay. Buyers frequently abort when asked
unnecessarily to enter their name and address.

The environment for EPUBs had seen somesignificant advances during the six months I was
writing Gene Mapper. In addition to iBooks
being able to display Japanese EPUB text

Left: Draft of Gene Mapper , in manuscript-paper layout. Details such as the nameof the company (“UCOM”) are different from the published version.
Right: The metadata access screen of the Manuscript app.

9

horizontally, word was that Rakuten andKinokuniya were both about to release iOSapps—Kobo and Kinoppy—that could display
EPUBs in vertical text.

From First Publication to Kindle Store #1
In June 2012, I began the necessary steps to beable to sell my ebook via Amazon and iTunes in
the United States. I obtained a US taxpayer
identification number over the phone, and tried
uploading an EPUB version of my manuscript tosee how things would work. Neither site officially
supported Japanese book sales yet, and in fact I
was unable to upload my Japanese EPUB to
iTunes at all. I had better luck at Amazon, where
I consulted tips provided by others who had used
KDP to publish in unsupported languages such as
Polish, and successfully confirmed that I would
be able to sell a horizontal text version of Gene
Mapper.

Excited at the prospect of my readers being able
to enjoy my ebook in the traditional Japanese
format they were used to, I began writing an
EPUB conversion program.
I’d written my manuscript in Aozora markup,
which was designed with conversion to XHTML
in mind, so converting the tags to HTML was nota particularly difficult job. But I neverthelessspent about a month writing a program that would
convert the entire book with a single command.
For a manuscript of just 200 pages, I could havedone the conversion manually in a matter ofhours, but I knew that I would need to run theconversion any number of times as I made final
corrections and adjustments—while also holding
down a full-time job. It needed to be automated.

Then Kobo Writing Life came on line in midJuly. Since I’d already tested the waters on
Amazon and iTunes, I had no hesitation ordifficulty in registering and putting my finishedfirst edition of Gene Mapper up for sale.

In other words, I toiled long and hard to savetime. This approach, much embraced in hacker
culture, continues to serve me well even today,
after I quit my job to become a full-time
professional author publishing in print as well. I
continue to write in Aozora markup, which I thenconvert to tagged text in InDesign for importing
into a template created by the publisher. The
simplicity of the procedure has made swapping
the manuscript back and forth with the publisher
virtually stress free.

When I went to check on my book in Rakuten’s
Kobo store, I experience an indescribablesensation of pressure. One well-known title after
another leaped into my eye: Terumae Romae(Thermae Romae). Hisame (Freezing Rain). The
sci-fi classic Andoroido wa denki hitsuji no yumeo miru ka (translation of Philip K. Dick’s Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). That was thekind of company Gene Mapper by this first-time
author found itself among. I wasn’t especiallyafraid of being exposed as a novice, but I couldn’t
help wondering how it might affect readers’attitudes toward a self-published work.

Even as I was developing my conversion
program, welcome news came my way. Rakuten,
which had bought Kobo, would begin sellingebooks in Japan. And in July they would also belaunching the EPUB-based self-publishingprogram Kobo Writing Life.

I suspected my book was the first effort at digital
self-publishing by a Japanese writer. I expected a
few of my friends to buy it, and I was convinced
the story was solid. They would recommend it toothers for me, and I could count on them to giveit good reviews, too. But I didn’t want thereviews to appear planted.

I had always figured I would take up thechallenge of cross-platform sales whenever suchprograms finally arrived in Japan, but I decided
to make them the centerpiece of my sales effort
immediately.

There wasn’t very much that I could do.
I wanted to sell my book fair and square. Thatmeant I had to get it noticed. So I decided to10

I still wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep itup, but I decided I was already doing what I
wanted to go on doing. Exactly one year had
passed since I’d first put Gene Mapper on sale.

“market” it. As my company did with the digitalcontent it produced, I put an ad for Gene Mapper
on the Web by designing a dedicated website(http://genemapper.info) and writing up somerelease notes. In some ways it seemed like anawful lot of trouble to go to for a single book, buteach step I took made me feel a little better.

In that time, the world of ebooks had changed. It
wasn’t just Amazon, Rakuten-Kobo, and Apple
anymore. Most of Japan’s publishers andproduction companies had gotten aboard withebooks. It had become routine for print and ebook
editions of a book to be published simultaneously.

The book went on sale on July 25, andimmediately became one of the bestsellers in the
Kobo Store. It got a similar response when
Amazon Japan opened its Kindle Store at the endof October: in spite of heavy competition fromthe major publishing houses, the Kindle editionof Gene Mapper became the #1 seller in theliterary category for 2012.

My own circumstances have changed since I firstpublished as well. I’m fortunate enough to havemultiple publishers asking to publish my works,
so for the time being I have no plans for any
further self-publishing projects.

Becoming a Full-Time Author

But I still find myself thinking about howelectronic books could be different.

I quit my day job in March 2013, just as Apple’s
iBooks Store was preparing to open in Japan.
More or less at the same time Gene Mapper
began taking off in the Kobo and Kindle Stores,
my responsibilities at e-frontier had grown
dramatically, and my health had broken downfrom the increased workload.

Perhaps the number of ruby applied next tocharacters could change according to how fast thereader is turning pages. Perhaps if you pick up abook after a lengthy break, the narration can
automatically expand to recap what has justhappened and refresh your memory of earlier
details. With books and computers traveling intandem, there might be other ways to enhance thereading experience besides just video and music.

As I recuperated at home, I spent a month on arevised and expanded version of my book, Gene
Mapper: Full Build, which I had contracted with
Hayakawa Shobō to publish as both an ebook andpaperback. Feeling that I needed more
rehabilitation time, I started in on my second
book, Ōbitaru kuraudo (Orbital Cloud), andplanned to look for another regular job once myhealth had fully recovered. A month went by, thentwo, and around the time I finished my fourth
month I realized things had changed.

Whatever form the next rebirth of books may
take, I want to be part of it—this time lending ahand from my position as an established author.
These are some of the things I think about as I
continue with my writing.

I had worked at quite a few different jobs sincejoining the working world—stage design, DTP,
multimedia and Web production, designer,
illustrator, and software engineer—and even at
the job I’d had for nearly a decade, my major
projects had changed at least yearly. In fact, I had
been accustomed to constant, even dizzying
change in my work from day to day. But now I
sat at my desk plugging away on Orbital Cloud,doing exactly the same thing one day after
another.

Taiyō Fujii (1971– ) became a publishingsensation in 2012 when he self-published theebook Gene Mapper. An expanded Gene
Mapper: Full Build came out the following
year from Hayakawa Shobō in both print andelectronic editions. His 2014 novel Ōbitaru
kuraudo (Orbital Cloud) was awarded the35th Japan SF Grand Prize. His latest work is
Biggu dēta konekuto (Big Data Connect), a
police novel that explores the growing crisis
in personal information and privacy.

11

The Disappearing Divide between Analog and Digital

Independent Technology Writer

Kazutoshi Ōtani

Escape from Dualism

The fact that beavers build dams is not my issue.
My issue is that when beavers build dams, we
regard them as part of nature, but when wehumans build dams, we think of them as artificial.

I’d like to offer some thoughts on theconvergence between analog and digital that isalready in progress.

If the dams that beavers “invented” in the courseof their evolution are “natural,” then shouldn’t
the dams “invented” by another animal—thehuman animal—to fill its needs also be treated as“natural”? And shouldn’t the same be said for thetools and materials humans use to build that dam,as well as the buildings and cities and cars andsuch that fill other human needs? It’s worth
noting that beaver dams, too, can cause
environmental damage, yet they are never labeled
as artificial or thought of as harming nature.

People are often given to thinking dualistically,
dividing things into two opposing ideas or
phenomena. Doing so helps us make sense of thecomplex world we live in by letting us see it insomewhat simpler terms. And so we look atthings in contrasting pairs: natural vs. artificial;
the humanities and the sciences; the real and thevirtual; analog vs. digital; atoms (the physicalworld) and bits (computer data). And to be sure,in situations where only one of the pair exists tobegin with and then the other enters the picture asa new notion or way of perceiving things, trying
to understand the new by setting it against the oldmakes perfect sense.

Even if this particular example is consideredextreme, we have seen a blurring of the divide
between traditional dualities on any number ofother fronts. Interdisciplinary studies havebrought down the fences that once separated thesciences and the humanities. Augmented reality(AR) technologies superimpose digitally
generated virtual images on real-life images toconvey desired information. Reality Computing
software removes the wall between bits andatoms with the help of 3D printers. An “Internetof Things” (IoT) is taking shape in which all thedifferent devices in our lives are connected overthe Internet for automated control.

But once the two have coexisted for a while, yousometimes realize that treating them as being
opposed to each other fails to capture certain
truths about them. For example, I have certain
questions about the way we use the terms“natural” and “artificial”—questions originallyoccasioned by thinking about beavers.
Beavers are of course famous for topplingwaterside trees and combining them with sticks,
bark, stones, mud, and such to build dams acrossstreams and rivers—sometimes reachingconsiderable proportions. According toWikipedia, the largest known beaver dam, locatedin a national park in Alberta, Canada, stretches
across some 850 meters (2790 feet) of water. And
there are signs that it may grow even longer inthe future.

Are Paper Books Competing with
eBooks?
To turn now to how this relates to books, many
commentators have been saying for some timethat the rise of digital (electronic) publishingwould lead to the demise of analog (print on
12

more to do with the kind of content being plannedor discovered.

paper) books—and print book sales have indeed
been dropping as ebook sales grow. According tofigures released by the Research Institute for
Publications on January 26, 2015, estimated salesof books and magazines through retail channels(not including electronic publications) for 2014
showed a 4.5% drop over the previous year, at¥1.6065 trillion. This was the steepest year-onyear decline since recordkeeping began in 1950.

Magazines, on the other hand, with theirdependency on advertising revenue, are clearlyfeeling the heat of competition from freenewspapers and the Internet, which are siphoning
away their content producers. In particular, as
consumer tastes and needs continue to diversify,
online magazines and news sites are able to serve
more relevant ads.

But as a matter of fact, sales figures for print
books have actually been on a downward trend
for nearly two full decades already, from a peakin 1996. Compared to this peak, the 2014 figures
represent a plunge of nearly 40%. Although 1996
was a time of considerable buzz about
dictionaries and multimedia content being
published on CD-ROMs, such electronic
publications were a long way from becoming amajor force in the market yet. In which case, theslump in print book sales that began in the mid1990s cannot be attributed to the rise ofelectronic publishing, but rather to the reduced
reading habits of the Japanese populace, or
perhaps to the natural attrition of weaker players
in an oversaturated market. What we have seen in2000 and beyond is better thought of as anextension, or even acceleration, of those forces.

At the same time, the “digital native” generationof young people who have grown up surroundedby electronic devices from the time they wereborn are more inclined to apply their disposable
income to the purchase of connectivity and apps,
and to devote the leisure time previous
generations might have spent on reading to social
media, video and online games, and watchingstreaming content from YouTube and othersources. The way they use both their time andtheir money represents a massive sea change.
In this sense, the correct understanding is not that
paper-based books are competing with ebooks,
but that the entire publishing business is faced off
against the full spectrum of new digitalentertainment media. Television, which long
ruled the media world, and the automobile, which
has been the king of consumer durables, are ineffectively the same boat.

An ICT Research & Consulting study shows thatthe ebook market grew from ¥67.1 billion in 2011
to ¥96.3 billion in 2013, and it is projected to
grow to ¥200 billion by 2017—roughly triple thesize of the 2011 market. Although these figures
speak to the growing promise of electronic
publishing, they do not offset the drop in paperbased book sales—which helps confirm thatebooks sales are not directly cannibalizing paper
publications.

A New Fusion Reading Experience
Until now, discussions about the future of books
have tended to focus on whether print books cansurvive, or on pitting print books and ebooks
against each other to point out in what ways
ebooks are better and in what ways they fallshort.

To unpack the situation a little further, on thebook side, there continue to be titles that do very
well, such as the Harry Potter series that soldover a million copies of each new volume, or the
explosively popular works of Haruki Murakami,
and in some years the book portion of the grosssales figure has actually ticked up in spite of thelarger overall decline when magazines areincluded. This suggests that the slump may have

But I believe the time has come to abandon the
dualistic assumptions underlying such talk, and toinstead begin thinking about how the best aspectsof both worlds—analog and digital—can bebrought together in a way that will allow books
and magazines of both the paper and electronic
varieties to hold their own in coexistence with13

other media and entertainment. One tool that may
hold the key to such a union is the smart pen.
Imagine with me the book of the future. I have infront of me a book printed on paper, but an ebook
with the same content is available for reading ona smart device—mine happens to be an iPhone,
but an Android phone will do just as well—and I
have purchased both versions as a set.

The Smart Pen holds endless hidden possibilities.
(Photo from the NeoLAB Convergence site: http://www.neolab.kr/smartpen/)

I leave the phone in my bag or pocket as I open
the paper book and begin reading. I enjoy the way
the book feels in my hand, and as I read, thechanging thickness of the pages gives me a tactile
sense of my progress that I find satisfying. I caneasily flip back to previous pages whennecessary, to refresh my memory of what I read
before. Then some particular phrase catches myattention, and I decide to mark it with my smart
pen. The line I draw is instantly reflected in theelectronic copy of the book loaded on my phone.
There’s no need for me to take the device out tocheck; I can read on without interruption.

own phone, but also in the copies of all myfriends who own the ebook, in a color that
identifies me as the source.
I’m so engrossed in the book that I finish it in asingle sitting. It was a superb read, and I’d like to
let the author know what I thought, so I write afew lines in the comment box and checkmark it
when I’m finished. My remarks are automaticallysent to the author’s email address. I make amental note to ask the author to sign my bookwith the smart pen if I ever have a chance to meethim. His signature will appear in my electronic
copy as well, and it will be a nice keepsake.

As I continue to read, I come across a word I
don’t know. I circle it with my smart pen andlook at my wrist. The definition is displayed on
my Apple Watch.

It suddenly occurs to me to check my phone, andI see that one of my friends has added a comment
to the passage I shared earlier. . . .

Reading further, I’m particularly struck bysomething the author says and I want to share itwith my friends. I frame the passage in a box
with my smart pen, jot down a brief note next toit, and checkmark the sharing icon in the cornerof the page. Now my markings are reflected not
only in the electronic copy of the book on my

What do you think? Does this vision of the bookof the future sound like a pipe dream?
I have in fact been using a device called the Neo
Smartpen N2 for some time now, and the ideas
I’ve outlined above are among those that came tome as I was thinking about the kind of
applications the device might make possible.
The N2 is a second-generation digital pen
developed by the South Korean company
NeoLAB Convergence. It is compatible with both
iOS and Android devices. A camera built into thetip of the pen reads microscopic patterns on thesurface of special paper to track its coordinates,
so that what the pen is writing appears
simultaneously in the companion notebook app
on a paired smartphone or tablet. And bycheckmarking the mail icon in the corner of theCircle a word on the page and the definition appears automatically on yourApple Watch. Enter an interlinear note and checkmark “Share” to make it
appear in your friends’ electronic copies of the same book.

14

page, the notes and drawings on the page can besent to a pre-set email address.

VOYAGER TIMELINEThe N2 is capable of sensing 256 different levelsof pressure, and because the pen’s path is stored
as stroke data, it can be scaled up or down
without any loss of detail (maximum resolution is1100 dpi).
There have previously been other examples ofthis technology, but it is the refinements seen in
the N2 hardware, together with the versatility ofits software, that make the future book scenario I
sketch out above seem entirely possible. Since
the N2 pen itself can internally store theequivalent of a thousand A4-sized pages of stroke
data for later syncing, it’s even possible to headout for a walk with nothing but a paper book anda pen and still have the same experience.

1998.7

T-Time Internet Vertical Writing and Reading Model (Hybrid
edition), a software which converts HTML files into book-liketext in a vertical layout, was released.

1998.10Adapted TTZ format into T-Time, a predecessor of dotbook
format (.book).

2000.6

Adapted .book file format.

2000.9.book was adopted as the standard ebook format in the PABURI
electronic library, the collaborative electronic bookstore of four
major publishing companies (KADOKAWA GROUP PUBLISHING,
Kodansha, SHUEISHA, SHINCHOSHA Publishing).

2006.2

Implemented low-brightness mode in T-Time. Made it possible
for visually impaired persons to read .books by providing choices
in font size, brightness of screen and a magnifying glass.

2006.10

Made T-Time compatible with Denshi-Kataribe, a text-to-speech
software, which made it possible to listen to .books.
Cooperated with CELSYS and INFOCITY. Adapted BookSurfing,a reader for mobile phones. Started distributing .book files in
BookSurfing format.

There may remain hurdles to overcome, but I
can’t help feeling that it will be through these
sorts of possibilities that books can finallytranscend the differences between analog anddigital and move on to their next stage ofdevelopment.

Kazutoshi Ōtani (1958– ) is a technology
writer who maintains a presence in a wide
variety of media. His interview subjects haveincluded Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Steve
Wozniak. He is director of AssistOn in
Harajuku, and vice-chair of the non-profit
MOSA. Among his publications are Appuru
no Mirai (The Future of Apple), and Seikō
Suru Kaisha wa Naze “Shashin” o Daiji niSuru no ka (Why Successful Companies
Obsess Over Their Photos).

2008.5

Announced T-Time Crochet. Started distributing encrypted.book files in increments for faster access. Realized a distributing
system for high capacity content, such as comics, that can
instantly respond to users’ requests regarding display mode.

2008.7

Released T-Time for iPhone. Started providing comic books for
iPhone and iPod touch in App Store.

2011.10

Released the “EPUB3 Japanese Basic Standard” in Japanese andEnglish. Jointly launched the EPUB Japanese Standard Study
Group (EPUBJP).

2011.12

Released “BinB”, a new reading system by Books in Browsers.
At the same time, opened “BinB store” running on this BinB
system.

2012.7

Started providing the “BinB” reading system to Yahoo! Japan
Bookstore.

2012.12

Provided the “BinB” reading system to Shueisha’s “Ultra Jump
Magazine Official Website”.

2013.2Published “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto – Japanese Edition –”edited by H. McGuire and B. O’Leary, originally published
by O’Reilly Media. Provided the “BinB” reading system
to Kodansha’s special bookstore site “Denponya San (Mr.
e-Bookstore)”.

2013.4

Provided the Chinese-compatible “BinB” reading system to
Taiwanese e-Bookstores, “eCrowd Media Inc.” and “Wanderer
Digital Publishing Inc.”.

2013.10“BinB” reading system, adds support for Aozora Bunko. Launch
new site “Aozora in Browsers” which features vertical writing
display of public domain eBooks registered in Aozora Bunko.

2014.7

Released “Romancer”, a web service for eBook production,
publishing, and promotion.
Start partnership with Ixtan, the rights management firm forwork of author Natsuki Ikezawa. Ikezawa’s series “impalae-books” is now available in online bookstores from around theworld.

15

2015.2Start providing “BinB”, a browser based reading system, toa digital comic promotional site “Mugenshi” by CHING WIN
PUBLISHING CO., LTD.

2015.7Began Yoshio Kataoka Digital Collection Project. First 100 titles
by the author was released, remaining titles will be released
chronologically.

Voyager Books

Yoshio Kataoka's 100 titles in eBook

Released in July 1, 2015

Natsuki Ikezawa's Master Digital Collection

TEXT: the next frontier

Available from "impala e-books" series.

"Looking at the Future of Book and Publishing"

For Authors, For ReadersOriginal Edition (Japanese) ﬁrst published on July 1, 2015
English Edition ﬁrst published on October 30, 2015
Cover Design: Koga Hirano
Translator: Wayne Lammers
Editorial Design: Marui-Kobunsha Corporation*T-Time, .book, .press, BinB, and Romancer are registered trademarks of Voyager Japan, Inc.
*Other product, company and service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Voyager Japan, Inc.
5-41-14 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
http://www.voyager.co.jp e-mail. infomgr@voyager.co.jp
tel. +81-3-5467-7070 fax. +81-3-5467-7080