CORPORATE INFORMATION

Publishing Service

Publishing A top brand of maps and guidebooks, we have enjoyed a large clientele for many years. Our publications have served our customers in their business and everyday life, as well as in planning their holidays and outings. We distribute our products via bookstores and convenience stores. Each of the publications is tailored to a particular customer base and their lifestyle. Our customers range from businesspeople and drivers to working women, mothers and their children, motorcycle riders, and amateur mountaineers.
Original Publishing Tools Tapping into our technical know-how on producing maps and guidebooks, we plan and create original tools such as brochures and novelty goods for enterprises and local governments. With our high-quality products, we meet our customers’ ever-diversifying needs. Our services include producing maps and guidebooks written in foreign languages for tourists from overseas, and offering tools available on the Internet, smartphones, and in mobile communication.
Advertising Shobunsha’s publications are segmented by area and target, serving as ideal advertising media for a wide range of our clients in the hotel, transportation, retail, and other industries. We use various advertising approaches, including tie-up, book-in-book, and cross-media ads.

Electronic Service

Website We run the websites “MAPPLE Kanko Guide” (online travel guide) and “MAPPLE Tourist Map” (online maps) that offer MAPPLE’s unique maps and travel guides. The MAPPLE website is linked with our publications, including “co-Trip,” “Touring MAPPLE,” and “Mountain and Highland Maps.” The website contains the latest information and seasonal updates that could not make it to the paper publications, so that the content helps our readers plan convenient and comfortable trips.
Hotel Booking “MAPPLE Travel” is a hotel booking website where our customers can make reservations at hotels and inns they have found in our guidebooks, such as “MAPPLE Magazine.” This website focuses especially on hot spring inns, taking advantage of resources Shobunsha has built up over years of covering hot spring resorts and interviewing managers of hot spring inns. You can book a hotel or inn by scanning the QR Code on the publication with your cellphone. The website and its email newsletters also provide information about seasonal accommodation plans.
Mobile Service We offer mobile services available on smartphones and regular cellphones. We develop and run applications, including “MAPPLE TOKYO Sky Tree App,” that provide MAPPLE unique maps and guides. We also offer a service called “MAPPLE-LINK,” which allows users to download information in “MAPPLE Magazine,” one of Shobunsha’s guidebooks, to their smartphones or cellphones so that they can plan their trips wherever they are, carry around the travel guides in the destination, and turn to the map contained in the guides for navigation.
Digital Content We provide digital maps, along with content offering maps and travel guides, for national agencies, local governments, and private enterprises. This is our consulting sales operations that offer solutions to a wide range of issues concerning crime and disaster prevention, disaster measures, tourism business, regional marketing, customer management and logistics. In recent years, we have amassed track records in assisting organizations in attracting customers through the use of maps and guides. Such efforts include developing web portals and providing shop information.
GIS & Mapping We receive orders from enterprises and local governments to make maps and develop geographical information systems. As a GIS vendor that provides comprehensive services ranging from inputting data to developing mapping software, we have materialized high-quality but low-cost GIS and mapping business.
Navigation We offer car navigation software “Mapple Navi” for PND makers, utilizing a wealth of map data and travel guides held by Shobunsha. The application provides not only driving routes but also information about good restaurants and things to see and do which is contained in issues of Mapple Magazine, in our efforts to promote car navigation business that helps make your travel more enjoyable and convenient.