Yoshinobu Noma’s great-grandfather Seiji founded Kodansha in 1909. The publisher dominated the magazine market before WWII, at which point it began to publish books as well. In the 1960s, the company added weekly manga magazines to its roster. Today, according to Kodansha, digital sales account for 40% of revenue, with print books and magazines bringing in 30%, and the remaining 30% coming from licensing.

Kodansha is evolving to meet ongoing issues facing the Japanese publishing industry. “The peak of the Japanese publishing market was 1996,” Noma says, noting population decline as one area of concern. “A decreasing number of readers is further compounded by low price points. Due to 20 years of deflation, Japanese publishers were not able to raise prices.” He sees potential in Southeast Asia, but in terms of international business, the U.S. and European markets remain Kodansha’s priorities.

Three years ago, Kodansha launched the K Manga platform in the U.S., publishing English translations of manga simultaneously with the Japanese originals. U.S. readers were clamoring to read Kodansha’s manga at the same time as it was published in Japan, Noma says, so releasing these translations not only satisfies a key market but also limits fan translations and piracy. The platform is available in more than 40 countries, though only in English. On the home front, manga makes up the vast majority of the e-book market; Japanese fans, Noma points out, started reading online manga on flip phones.

Kodansha is reconceiving the way it develops IP through its Creators’ Lab initiative, which awards up to ¥10 million ($65,000) to indie game and film creators. “The gaming and movie industries are a great source of storytellers,” Noma says. “For young people who consume their media via smartphones, all media are interchangeable. Kodansha needs to cast its nets as widely as possible to recruit new talent who think about content in multiple media. Young creators can produce all kinds of media very cheaply and without expensive equipment.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, he says, indie games are not particularly costly to produce, compared with “supporting a new manga author over the three to five years needed to develop new content. This new generation of talent will be able to start from any medium—for example, adapt a game into a novel, rather than follow the traditional manga to anime pipeline.” After all, Noma notes, “for young people, content is content.”

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