Archive for January, 2010

* Kindle in Japan

2010/01/18 | Filed under Book | Tags .

In coming March, the picture book for kids, for which I have translated into Japanese will be released.

The original book is ‘La mission de Seraphine’ text by Sylvie Auzary-Luton, illustration by Myriam Deru, published by Mijade, a Belgian publisher. (Original text was in French, but I was given English text as well.)

For this book, I found it interesting , that the story includes a scene the mouse girl and her friend were so upset that they teased the naughty snail. (Finally happy ending) In Japan, we do not often have this kind of reality in children’s books, so i was impressed about it illustrates kids’ life naturally.

Nice happy story with beautiful and lovely illustrations, i am so delighted to have worked for this book.

By the way ,  I like to read books in English, and I often purchase from amazon.com directly, not only from amazon. co.jp, so I have got amazon kindle last month.

it’s great! so nice for a person like me who loves reading on the couch.

first I was surprised because  it was delivered  just 2 days after my order to amazon, shipped directly from the US!

one of my cat ‘nyanka’ also checking the kindle.

at the beginning, i was wondering whether I can know correctly where in the book I am, but it was no worrying. because it shows where we reach by persentage in below on the screen,and I got used to it completely when I was finishing to read the first book in kindle.

The first book i read in kindle is ‘Scat’ by Carl Hiaasen. the suspense story for children, but intresting enough for adults too.

In Japan, e-book business was once collapsed in a few years ago, I think one reason was the shortage of contents. Japanese publishers were not very willing to release the book contents for e-book devices, but I think the overall structure of publishing business in Japan should also face to drastic change shortly… and I am also involved in publishing in Japan, so…what’s next?

Personally I think, especially the visual books are better to have in real paper book style, while the books with just text  can definitely work well on e-books. So those paper books will persue more ‘ substantial beauty’ , then it will be more closer to ‘gift’ (which we call ‘zakka’ in Japanese, in spite not meaning exactly ‘gift’ but I think it indicates same kind of goods as ‘gifts’), with beautiful design, paper stuffs and so on.

.