Book Wholesaler Begins Dealing With Smaller Shops; Japan’s Tohan Introduces New Delivery System

The Yomiuri Shimbun

10:39 JST, October 20, 2024

Tohan Corp., one of Japan’s two major book wholesalers, has begun selling books to smaller bookstores than before, it announced Thursday.

The Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo-based company has devised a new delivery method to cut transportation costs and thus enable deliveries of smaller quantities. It aims to lower the hurdles to opening a bookstore and increase the number of unique bookstores offering good selections of books.

Ordinarily, the wholesaler makes frequent deliveries of both books and magazines. Under the new method, dubbed “Honyal,” magazines are excluded to enable limiting deliveries of books to about once a week. By lowering transportation costs, Tohan aims to meet demand from stores that carry only several thousand books — or even as few as 100.

Currently, bookstores generally purchase books from wholesalers.

The wholesalers keep books and magazines purchased from publishers in their warehouses and transport them by truck to bookstores and convenience stores. The new method improves the situation in which Tohan could only profitably deal with stores that had a certain volume of books to transport. Also, the company will no longer require a guarantor or deposit for bookstores to start buying books from it, thereby encouraging new entrants to the market.

According to the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development, the number of bookstores nationwide declined from 15,602 in fiscal 2013 to 10,918 in fiscal 2023. In March, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry established a project team to revitalize bookstores.