Wayz Japan[J], a Tokyo-based tech start-up company which develops e-publishing platforms, recently released two services that allow old-fashioned publishers to switch themselves into digital as easily as 1-2-3.
Last week the company introduced an iPhone/iPod touch app allowing users to browse the latest issues of 400 magazines. Without visiting a bookseller nor worrying about possibly being warned by a bookseller’s clerk to stop your browsing, you can check out TOCs and thinned pages of your favorite magazines for free. To avoid paying high commission of the iPhone/iPod in-app transaction, you can make no purchase to download the entire edition of what you wish to read, however by clicking a button prepared for each magazine on the app, you’ll be redirected to e-hon[J], an online bookseller operated by Japan’s major book distributor Tohan[J].
Meanwhile, the company also introduced a website[J] aggregating local newspapers being published around the country, and made us possible to subscribe to it both in digital and in paper-printed form. Currently seven local newspapers are participating in this service, and the company expects to enlarge the variation up to 50 newspapers by the end of this year. Each issue costs JPY100 (approx. USD1.10) without some exception, and it mostly equals to a newsstand price.
Masaru IKEDA