Chapter 290: The Surprise Brought by the Distributor

Facing the invitation from Akiwara Yuto, the president, Nishijima Sota hesitated for a long time before finally agreeing.

Because in addition to the status of president, he could also receive a certain percentage of dividends from the year-end profits based on the publishing house's performance.

Immediately following this, the news that Nishijima Sota had succeeded Ankutsu Goichi as president and Asano Aiko had taken the position of vice president became known to all the employees of the publishing house.

As for the news that "Anku Bookstore" was being renamed "Tsutaya Bookstore," not many people paid it any attention.

After all, Nishijima Sota was the original head of the marketing department, so the news of him serving as president was quickly accepted by most of the staff.

However, the fact that Asano Aiko was serving as vice president caused quite a few people to let their imaginations run wild and grow suspicious.

Akiwara Yuto had no intention of coming forward to explain; he simply told Nishijima Sota to arrange the publishing work with Asano as soon as possible and to weed out the original "cronies" of Ankutsu Goichi, such as the former heads of finance and human resources.

Shortly thereafter, the new Tsutaya Bookstore publishing house began to work at full speed on the publication of the book *A Personal Matter*.

Because the book had a relatively low word count, the proofreading, typesetting, printing, cover design, and other tasks were completed in less than a week, and they prepared 60,000 copies for the first edition to be released.

However, before the official release, they encountered a very serious problem.

……

On Monday afternoon, the atmosphere in the third-floor conference room of Tsutaya Bookstore was very oppressive.

At the conference table, Akiwara Yuto sat in the main seat, looking down as he flipped through a document submitted by Nishijima Sota. Nishijima Sota sat beside him, while Asano Aiko, Satake Maki, and others sat further down.

This was an internal meeting, and its main task was to discuss the sales volume of the first edition.

After Akiwara Yuto put down the document with a sullen face, he said in a voice that betrayed no emotion: "President Nishijima, is the order volume from the distributors only half of what it was originally?"

For the circulation of books in Japan, distributors are a very important channel.

In other words, most publishing houses and bookstores only deal with book distributors, and the model is "Publishing House—Distributor—Bookstore."

The reason this model exists is because nearly 500,000 types of books and over 3,000 types of magazines circulate in the Japanese market every year. For some bookstores and publishing houses, it is very difficult to find partners to cooperate with individually.

Furthermore, due to cost reasons, the distributor system gradually formed two major monopolies during its continuous development: the two companies known as Tokyo Hanbai and Nihon Hanbai.

Nishijima Sota felt a bit guilty; after all, this was the first task he had handled since becoming president, and it had resulted in this blunder.

However, he still told the truth: "Yes, Tokyo Hanbai proposed an order of 3,000 copies, and Nihon Hanbai proposed an order of 7,000 copies; both have dropped by a significant percentage compared to before."

"What is their reasoning?"

"The people in charge on both sides believe that *A Personal Matter* is traditional literature, so the sales volume will definitely be limited."

After hearing this, Akiwara Yuto fell silent; this was undoubtedly just an excuse.

Before this, his *Snow Country* was also traditional literature, and it sold quite well. Moreover, at that time, they did not lower their procurement volume because of any "traditional literature" argument.

And for all of this to happen after he acquired Anku Bookstore, isn't that a bit too coincidental?

Akiwara Yuto had a target of suspicion in his heart, but he skipped over this point for now and just asked: "President Nishijima, what channel do you plan to use to sell the remaining 50,000 copies?"

Nishijima Sota and Asano Aiko exchanged a glance, then replied: "Akiwara-sensei, we are preparing to see if we can move 30,000 copies through trial reading events, and then keep the remaining 20,000 copies as bookstore inventory."

After hearing this, Akiwara Yuto didn't even look up, but calmly asked: "Can trial reading events move 30,000 copies?"

The so-called trial reading event is actually just the publishing house finding a bunch of bookstores they have good relations with to come and show their support.

But Anku Bookstore, or the current Tsutaya Bookstore, only has good relations with about a hundred or so bookstores in the Tokyo area.

If they wanted to move 30,000 copies, it would mean that each of them would have to order at least 300 copies or more.

One must know that *A Personal Matter* is only traditional literature; the order quantity for each store would certainly not be like that of mystery novels, and being able to get a hundred or so copies would be considered fulfilling a favor.

The atmosphere in the conference room turned cold. Nishijima Sota felt guilty and didn't speak, while Asano Aiko stood up and replied: "Akiwara, we will do our best."

Upon hearing these words, Akiwara Yuto could only nod hesitantly.

He knew he was being a bit unreasonable; the decrease in distributor orders was very likely the work of Keihan Publishing behind the scenes.

So, to be honest, it couldn't be blamed on Nishijima Sota.

However, not having an immediate solution to this matter still made him feel somewhat unhappy.

Akiwara Yuto thought for a while, then offered a suggestion: "President Nishijima, if we were to establish channels with all bookstores individually, how much cost would that be expected to incur?"

Upon hearing this proposal, Nishijima Sota immediately shook his head: "Akiwara-sensei, this is not feasible! There are over 30,000 bookstores and over 50,000 retail agency outlets in all of Japan; if we rely solely on ourselves to establish channels, the cost would be too exorbitant."

He paused, then added: "Moreover, many advance payments and settlement payments require the distributors to take on the intermediary function. If we were to do it ourselves, it would occupy our existing operating capital."

Akiwara Yuto did not feel discouraged after hearing this, but instead began to ponder in his heart.

Toh-Han and Nippan occupy the bulk of the market, handling the procurement business for the majority of bookstores respectively, but there are still about 8,000 bookstores that handle their own procurement or cooperate with other distributors.

Therefore, he could find a way out and strengthen cooperation with these distributors.

Besides that, there is competition between Toh-Han and Nippan; perhaps he could visit one of them and strengthen sales through an exclusive partnership.

However, before that, he still had to determine how Keihan Publishing was influencing Toh-Han and Nippan.

After clarifying his thoughts, Akiwara Yuto said to Nishijima Sota: "President Nishijima, let's proceed with the publishing house's channels according to what you want to do, but I have one requirement."

Nishijima Sota had just let out a sigh of relief in his heart, only for it to tighten up again. "Please, go ahead."

"Within these two weeks, compile the contact information for all the distributors on the market and estimate their respective sales volumes. In addition, help me schedule appointments with the people in charge of Toh-Han and Nippan separately."

Nishijima Sota quickly understood Akiwara Yuto's plan, so he nodded and agreed.

Time quickly reached next Tuesday, and Akiwara Yuto, together with Nishijima Sota, brought gifts to the headquarters building of Tokyo Hanbai...