30 years of e-publishing in Japan: How have e-dictionaries and e-books changed, from their origin to the present

Abstract

We abstract 30 years of history of e-publishing business in Japan. E-publishing was launched upon the invention of CD-ROM in Japan. Among e-publishing, e-dictionary was produced as a CD-ROM dictionary in the late 80'S, being succeeded to mobile dictionary that became the mainstream in the late 90'S. The release of i-mode in 1999 led to the launch of membership service of mobile dictionary, followed by the current mainstream of networking dictionary and smartphone dictionary application. In such dynamic movement of e-market, e-dictionary as a service for a price is struggling to compete with the free dictionary on the internet as well as search engines. E-books, compared to e-dictionaries, took their time to be vastly recognized in the market. After the first e-book store was launched in the middle of 90'S, similar stores have been opened one after another, induced by increasing comic readers on mobile phones by i-mode. Affected by the birth of smartphones and emerging e-book market in the US, 2010 was called "the first year of e-books" in Japan, to be remembered as an epoch-making year. From now on, seeking for the unique benefit "e-book" can provide as an emerging platform, not only just digitalizing physical books, would be quite necessary.