Print book, magazine sales in Japan below 1 tril. yen, 1st time since 1975

TOKYO – Estimated sales of physical books and magazines in Japan in 2025 dipped below 1 trillion yen ($6.4 billion) for the first time in five decades, falling 4.1 percent from a year earlier to 964.7 billion yen, a recent study showed.

Print sales have been on a downward trend since hitting a peak of 2.66 trillion yen in 1996. Even when combined with digital media sales, the total fell for the fourth straight year in 2025, down 1.6 percent to an estimated 1.55 trillion yen, according to the Research Institute for Publications.

Physical magazine sales in 2025 slipped 10.0 percent to 370.8 billion yen, with weekly publications marking a record plunge of 17.9 percent to 51.3 billion yen. Monthlies dropped 8.6 percent to 319.5 billion yen.

Sales of manga books in print form, which are included in the magazine category, sank around 15 percent, likely hit by the end of popular works such as “Jujutsu Kaisen” as well as an overall move toward digital comics.

The estimated sales of physical books, on the other hand, inched up by 200 million yen to 593.9 billion yen, slightly rebounding after a three-year slump thanks to the popularity of a string of bestsellers including the original novel behind the Kabuki-themed blockbuster film “Kokuho.”

While many local bookstores have closed doors in the face of the shrinking market, other independent shops combining book sales with other services have popped up to fill niche spaces in the publishing industry.

“In order for bookstores like ours to survive, we must depend on solid demand for physical publications,” said Yu Iwashita, an editor who runs a bookstore that opened in April last year in Hino, western Tokyo.

“Bookshops would disappear if we relied on the logic of capitalism,” Iwashita said. The shop, Bookstore and Kitchen Yorimashido, also operates as a cafe and event space, and has been welcomed by locals.

There have also been grassroots movements, including the growing popularity of so-called shared bookstores, where individuals can rent space on a store bookshelf to sell personal collections.

“It is not that books are not being read at all,” said Kyoko Shibano, a media studies professor at Sophia University, noting the efforts by independent bookstores and the popularity of self-published zines. “I don’t think we can simply equate the recent study with a decline of the publishing industry.”