IDPF Board candidate: Junichi Yoshii, Kodansha (INCUMBENT)

May 26, 2016

Currently being one of the board members of IDPF, I believe I would extend my service continued to be an asset to the IDPF Board for the following reasons:

I trust IDPF is interested in expanding adoption of EPUB 3 and its extensions in magazines and educational publications in addition to the general trade publishing. My advocacy of EUB 3 will only support IDPF’s interest in the Japanese publishing industry.
For the past two years, I have served IDPF as a board member to extend interest in EPUB particularly in the Japanese as well as Asia’s publishing and its related industries. I have coordinated IDPF and Readium related functions as one of the key principals such as at EDUPUB Tokyo in September 2014.
I have solely dedicated my efforts in digital publishing in the past two decades. My experiences at the Japanese organizations as well as in the international joint venture (Random House Kodansha) should contribute to EPUB 3 expansion in Japan and in the world.
With a strong support from the Japanese government, Japanese publishing industry is intending to expand the publishing efforts to the global market including US, Europe and Asia more than ever. IDPF needs a strategic and strong initiative in the Japanese publishing industry. I can assume such position and will be able to effectively contribute to the board of the organization.  
 
1. Primary representative of the Japanese publishing industry
 
I represent the following IDPF member organizations in the Japanese publishing industry:
o Kodansha Co., Ltd. (“Kodansha”)
o The Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan (“EBPAJ”)
o Digital Comic Association (“DCA”) 
o Japan Electronic Publishing Association (“JEPA”)
As a primary representative of the above prominent Japanese publishing organizations, I will fully represent Japanese publishers interest in general trade publishing content (EBPAJ), Manga (DCA) as well as magazines (Kodansha). Thus, if elected to an IDPF Board position, I will serve to contribute further adoptions of EPUB 3 with any extension of the format in the Japanese publishing industry in all. 
It is anticipated that Japanese publications including Manga and general trade content and magazines will be distributed to U.S. and other parts of the world in the coming years. IDPF can leverage such global expansion of the Japanese publications contained in EPUB 3 to the growth of the format in the various parts of the world.
 
2. My profile and position as being a candidate to IDPF Board Member
 
Name: Juinichi Yoshi (Mr.) Age: 59 (Born: August 12, 1956)
I have served for the following organizations and the positions to date:
o Kodansha(1980 to present: Executive Director)
o Toyokuni Printing (2007 to present: Chairman of Advisory Board)
o MobileBook.jp (2005 to present: Board Member)
o Voyager Japan (2004 to present: Board Member)
o Japan Digital Library Service (2013 to present: Board Member)
o Content Works (2001 to 2007: President)
o Random House Kodansha (2003 to 2007: Supervisory Board Member)
o Publishing Link (2003 to 2007: Board Member)
IDPF can leverage my extensive knowledge and expertise in eBooks for the continued growth of EPUB. 
My publishing background below should directly contribute to IDPF:
o 17 years+ experiences as a magazine editor.
o 10 years+ administrative experiences in technology and business development of digital publishing /operations at Kodansha.
o 6 yeas of being CEO/Chairman of Toyokuni Printing, a subsidiary of Kodansha, specializing in digital publishing productions, data storage and distribution, metadata.
o Knowledge and expertise as being at executive positions of various publishing enterprises as listed above.
 
While my advocacy in physical publishing remains, I wish to support and synchronize with the efforts of developing new publishing frontiers on EPUB and Open Web Platform.
 
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the further development of EPUB.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Junichi Yoshii 

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