I’d like to point out a couple changes for Honto eBook worth making, since I use them a lot and it’s basically my main digital eBook platform for Japanese materials.
You don’t actually need a Japanese address or credit card. I haven’t tried one of my normal credit cards with them but my privacy.com burner card works just fine and they’ve never asked me for a home address. They’re actually much easier to sign up for than a Japanese Kindle account IMO since you don’t even need a VPN. I don’t think this has changed since I signed up since I’ve purchased stuff within the past week
There are also some pros worth mentioning:
They have a ton of coupons, and if there’s a coupon available for the particular book you’re looking at it’ll straight up tell you right on the page, I’d say they probably do a lot more discounts than Kindle does.
In addition to coupons and the usual sample pages, they frequntly have limited time free-reading promotions, where the entirety of a book (usually a manga) is just completely available to read for free during a certain period. So if you make it through during that window it’s basically free reading material.
They also have reward points for buying stuff that you can combine with coupons.
Since it’s not Kindle, people who use the Kindle ecoystem for their English/non-japanese books don’t have to go through the hassle of logging out of their domestic kindle account. I have a pretty sizable English kindle library and I hate having to log in and out of stuff, so it might actually be more convenient for some people to get their stuff Japanese on a second platform.
I haven’t tried ordering physical goods from Honto but they do have a partnership with Buyee to get things with, so out of all the Japanese booksellers that aren’t specifically geared to westerners they’re probably the most international friendly
I definitely agree their desktop reader could be better, but I actually think it’s a pretty good platform overall that’s worth looking into as a Kindle alternative since IMO there are fewer hoops to jump through to set up with them, even if Kindle’s reader is better.
Whoops, haha. For some reason I’m fine grabbing JP Audible links from the Amazon page, but my brain immediately jumps to the main Audible site for the US version. I can swap them over easy, no need to fix anything!
It’s a war no man has won, so don’t feel too bad. If anything it’s the mark of a well-used site, right?
Tangentially related: My favorite book provider (which is not popular with the overall community, I know - Amazon and Bookwalker far outpace it) is Rakuten. Have you looked into their affiliate program@brandon ? Would be happy to use a Natively link on my book orders from them and write up something about them down the line
Yep, they’re related to Kobo - I actually got into using them back when I had a Kobo. I buy all my ebooks from them now excluding the random manga which I get from Bookwalker.
Sorry to double post! Just to test I went and bought a random cheap book off my wishlist - 世界からボクが消えたなら 映画「世界から猫が消えたなら」キャベツの物語 | L27 for 550円. Hopefully you’ll be able to see if it’s working soon!
Kinokuniya are the largest bookstore chain in Japan. Their Japanese website has a very large selection of books and will ship internationally with payments by a foreign credit card. Their setup has some quirks, though:
You have to create an international-shipping account up front; it seems to be a separate system from their Japan-based account creation, so make sure you’re filling in the correct account creation form. Confirmation of the account takes a few hours before you can actually use it for placing an order.
International accounts are not eligible to gain or redeem loyalty points, so you don’t get to make savings by being a regular customer.
You don’t get to pick a delivery address different from the one address you gave when you signed up. (You can tell the courier a different address once the package has shipped, though.)
Shipping costs are a bit of a gamble, because you don’t get told the exact cost before you place the order, and they have very broad bands. For example for shipments to the UK anything up to 2kg is 3500 yen, and then 2kg to 7kg is 7700 yen. So 1.99kg of books is very good value, and 2.01kg is very bad value…
Kinokuniya also has a US site that doesn’t need all of the confusing stuff I think. As long as you’re in the US obviously. But it would be good to add.
Just letting you know I’ve ordered a few things on separate orders through the amazon.co.uk link. Hopefully it works. I’ll add more once I find more I want to buy.
One thing I noticed in the small print: Apparently as soon as you have completed 1 order with amazon, the affiliate link expires, thus even if you have multiple orders within the 24h period, you need to make sure you open a new affiliate link to restart the timer.
(Relevant particularly for Kindle orders, methinks. Or maybe I am stupid, but I have not found a way to add kindle books to my basket - it’s always immediate purchase.)
Ok, added! I was also easily able to add them to the auto processing, so should links should start coming in automatically.
Yeah I see that. I’ve listed them as ‘Kinokuniya JP’ accordingly. If people want the US version or the ebook version … let me know and I can add.
Unfortunately, after looking into it, it’s through a third party platform which requires you to have a Japanese corporate code & Japanese bank account. The commission fee is also only 1%, which is insanely low (usually it’s around 5%)… so not worth the hassle right now.
I’m still not seeing it, but perhaps we’ll give it another day. It looks like you probably just clicked the affiliate link here in the forum? It might be better to click a product link… so make a UK link for one of the books and click that. Idk. I’m not even seeing clicks though which is weird… i’m seeing 0s for everything.
I hope this shouldn’t impact it (I’d assume it’s tied to session?) but the link took me to the paperback so I flipped it to ebook and the url no longer contained the affiliate looking add ons. If it doesn’t show it in a bit can test on that theory, or perhaps my cookie management / privacy settings are impacting it.
How affiliate programs work under the hood is a bit of a gray area to me
