An Anonymous Patron writes “An Aug. 10, 2007 post from Tokyo reports that cellphone novel downloads already outstrip paper books in Japan
The biggest seller has been a work entitled The Red Thread, which has sold over one million digital copies in six months; each phone novel can cost anywhere between $1 and $8.”
There’s something odd about those numbers…
If they’re saying “these two enovels outsold any print novels,” OK. If they’re saying fewer than three million print books were sold in Japan in the first half of 2007…well, I flat-out don’t believe that.
Japan’s population is about 40% of U.S. population. U.S. print book sales for the first half of 2007 were almost certainly more than a billion. Yes, the cultures are different, but to believe that Japan book sales are less than .3% of U.S. book sales…well, “horsepuckey” comes to mind.