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Photobook sales are falling in Japan, but the available figures do not establish a worldwide decline. Japan’s Photo Imaging Association says sales volume has decreased since fiscal 2021, after the pandemic disrupted photo-taking opportunities. It points to changing ways of using photographs and fewer overseas trips as possible contributors. A separate US consumer study identifies a more practical obstacle: creating and ordering a customized book can take too much time and effort. Making books easier to create and more relevant to how people use photos is worth testing, but no cited evidence shows that a particular change has reversed the decline.
What the figures say—and where they apply
The clearest standalone photobook figures here are for Japan, not the global market. The Japan Photo Imaging Association (JPIA) reports that the market grew through fiscal 2019, first declined in fiscal 2020 as COVID-19 reduced opportunities to take photos, and continued declining from fiscal 2021. JPIA’s fiscal years run from April through March.
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In its June 30, 2026 forecast, JPIA estimated fiscal 2025 sales at 7.17 million books, or 92% of the prior year’s volume, with sales value of ¥9.5 billion, or 95% of the prior year. For fiscal 2026, it projected 6.81 million books, 95% of the prior year’s volume, and ¥9.5 billion in sales value, 100% of the prior year. These are association estimates and projections, not audited final results. The fiscal 2026 forecast partly reflects slight declines reported by some retailers from April onward. JPIA’s forecast
The projected difference between units and sales value means volume is expected to weaken more than value in fiscal 2026. Those topline figures alone do not establish why, and they cannot be used to infer changes in prices or margins.
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Why US merchandise figures do not settle the question
There is no comparable standalone US photobook figure in the cited material. Rise Above Research’s 2024 forecast summary expected just under 2% unit-sales growth for US photo merchandise overall. It also forecast nearly $3 billion in combined 2024 sales for photo cards, books, calendars, and wall and tabletop décor. Those figures cover a broader category, so they neither show that US photobooks grew nor contradict Japan’s decline. Rise Above Research’s US forecast summary
The evidence therefore supports a specific statement: Japan’s photobook market is forecast to keep declining in volume. It does not establish that photobook sales are falling worldwide. A proper comparison would need matching geographies, years, units or sales values, category definitions, and forecast-versus-results status. Futuresource describes a Western Europe report with country-level volume and value coverage and forecasts through 2026, but the report itself is not available in the cited material. Futuresource report description
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Why might people be buying fewer books?
JPIA presents possible contributing factors, not a quantified explanation of how much each one affects sales.
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The association links the first decline, in fiscal 2020, with COVID-19 restrictions and fewer opportunities to take pictures. A photobook depends on having images worth collecting, so fewer photo-taking occasions may also mean fewer book projects.
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Photos are being used in more ways
JPIA says photography is no longer only about storing memories in books. People may display or carry prints, give them as gifts, or enjoy images as video. It cites examples such as putting a print in a phone case, making it into a key ring, or displaying a favorite photograph. That suggests competition from other formats and occasions—not proof that people have stopped valuing printed photographs.
JPIA also says younger consumers increasingly want to display, carry, and gift prints. Its forecast does not provide an age-specific photobook conversion rate, so this should not be read as evidence that young people universally prefer video or other formats to books. JPIA’s market forecast JPIA’s imaging outlook
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Fewer overseas trips may mean fewer photo collections
For Japan, overseas travel has not returned to its 2019 level. JPIA reports 20 million Japanese overseas travelers in 2019 and 13 million in 2024, and says the shortfall may affect photobook demand. It does not quantify that effect, so travel is a plausible source of fewer photo-taking occasions rather than a measured cause of the sales decline. JPIA’s imaging outlook
Some use cases remain strong
JPIA says books documenting children’s growth remain a durable use case, and describes newer services aimed at parents doing that. This points to continuing demand tied to particular milestones even as total book volume falls; it does not show that family books offset the market decline.
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Creating a book can be too much work
A separate, actionable issue is the purchase process. Rise Above Research’s June 2025 report page says that starting and completing a book project can be time-consuming and difficult, particularly when buyers customize backgrounds, captions, and design. The report covers US buyers and non-buyers surveyed over 2022–2024; its public description says most purchasers planned to buy again within the next year, but does not disclose detailed barrier percentages or survey sample counts. It therefore identifies friction worth addressing, not an abandonment rate or an explanation for Japan’s market trend. Rise Above Research’s consumer report description
For a general-tech audience, the practical question is how much work an app or service puts between photos on a phone and a finished printed book. JPIA says smartphone-ordering apps, wider product ranges, and collaborations with data-storage services were among the features that helped the market expand before the downturn. These examples show how providers have approached convenience; they do not prove that any one feature caused growth or can restore it. JPIA’s market forecast
What could make photobooks easier to buy?
Providers can test changes that reduce effort while preserving the option to make a personal, polished book. Useful experiments include:
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- Helpful starting layouts: offer clear templates and sensible defaults so a buyer can finish a good-looking book without designing every page.
- Optional, approachable customization: keep choices such as backgrounds and captions available, but make them easy to understand and skip.
- Prompts tied to real occasions: help people organize photos for family milestones, travel, gifts, or display, rather than treating a book as an abstract project.
These are reasoned interventions based on the documented workflow barrier and JPIA’s examples—not proven fixes. Success should be evaluated through measures such as project completion, time to create, repeat purchases, and sales volume and value broken out by product type and geography. The cited sources do not report controlled tests of these changes or a market-wide recovery attributable to them.
Can the decline be fixed?
Possibly, if “fixed” means making photobooks easier to create and better suited to current photo habits—not guaranteeing a return to historical growth. The evidence points to two sensible levers: reduce the effort involved in curation, design, and ordering, and give people more reasons to make books around occasions they care about. Whether those changes can reverse a market decline remains unproven.
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