I would be interested to know how much the Book Off model depends on the fact that manga is a huge market in Japan. Every time I've been into a Book Off, there's always been a huge manga section and it's always packed with people because (a) manga is really popular and (b) they don't shrinkwrap the manga to prevent people reading them in the shop the way a lot of places do. In a market like the UK or US where (comics being more niche than manga) there isn't that huge part of the store that's driving footfall and turnover, would the same model but working primarily with books do as well ?
Manga is certainly big part of it, but there was always a sizeable "text only" section as well - 20-30% maybe ? Manga 40-50% I would guess. And indeed, no shrinkwrapping (only exception - the 1000 yen series bundles, but thereit was for practical purposes :) ) and you can see a lot people reading at any time.
And its kinda necessary to find what your are lokking for, especially if you are a foreigner with shaky levels of reading Japanese. :) Also you can find interesting stuff you did not know existed just by picking a random book and looking inside. More so as each Book Off store seems to have different gems hidden inside - we visited quite a few (Kagoshima, Kawasaki, Akihabara) and each one had something special. :)
Oh, absolutely, as a foreigner in a Book Off I love the no-shrinkwrap policy and also the way it's a large and well-populated space that's much less intimidating to walk into than the kind of second hand bookshop that's practically empty and you feel like you're being observed by the old dude behind the counter... And they are indeed great too for buying "text-only" books -- I'm just not sure the business model would work anywhere near so well if the text-only section had to carry the whole thing without that 50% manga area.
Agreed about the regular local (in my case Czech Republic) used book shops - they are kinda like antiquities and totally different atmosphere. They also seems to buy & sell old and somehow interesting books - if you just want to sell a recently released novel or some text books good luck. As far as I can tell Book Off does not make such a distinctions.
Anyway, as a result there is really not a good place where to sell newer less interesting books to other people - there are some online Ebay like sites & I've heard people buy & sell used books over Facebook. Still far cry from basically going to a nearest Book Off with bags of books to sell (at least that's how I imagine it to work when you sell books to them ;-) ).
Maybe that could be something that would make it work here as well. It really seems like there is a complete "circle" for books in Japan but not here & Book Off seems to be a big part of that.
Physical media of all kinds is much more sought after in Japan and book consumption is much higher than the US as well.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Japanese bookstores, used, specialty, and commercial. The range and quality of works is staggering. Even pre-Amazon, I’m not certain the US had such a robust market of booksellers. Could probably be only compared to somewhere like France.
Brand-new book distribution system in Japan also heavily depends on manga magazines, especially for magazines. It's getting unsustainable on nationwide due to sales decreasing.
