Last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the publishing industry found itself in a situation where it had to temporarily cancel author publication events that had been held as real events. In response to this situation, KADOKAWA Corporation started initiatives to move publication events online from last year. Currently, many publication events are held through both real and online formats.

This time, we talked to Mika Komoto, the manager of the Content and Services Department of the Publishing Business Group at KADOKAWA Corporation, about the live streaming of publication events.

The motivation for engaging in online author publication events

ZAIKO Editorial Team:
Could you tell us about the background of KADOKAWA starting to engage in online author publication events?

Komoto:
Due to the state of emergency declared in March 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to cancel all publication events scheduled for April and May of that year. However, we felt that it was necessary to find a way to hold events in some form, which became the impetus for starting online events.
Nevertheless, having completely relied on real events until then, figuring out