Japanese bookseller Kinokuniya Co. has reportedly bought up 90 percent of the first printing of Haruki Murakami’s latest title, Novelist as a Vocation.
The company purchased 90,000 copies of the title, which had a print run of 100,000, in order to make the books harder to find online, and thus drive readers into stores. The move comes as Amazon and other online retailers are pushing to sell books online in Japan.
“The reality of the industry today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for bricks-and-mortar bookstores to purchase copies of high-profile new books,” a spokesperson for the book company told The Asahi Shimbun. “To rival online book retailers, bookstores across the country now need to join hands in efforts to reinvigorate the conventional book distribution market.”
(Via The Huffington Post).
