A major Japanese bookshop chain is taking a stand against the increasing dominance of online retailers such as Amazon by restricting their access to the first print run of a new essay collection by Haruki Murakami.

According to the Asahi Shimbun, the 66-store chain Kinokuniya is set to acquire 90,000 copies of the 100,000-copy first print run of Murakami’s Novelist As a Vocation, which is out in Japanese on 10 September. The chain, reported the Japanese paper, then plans to sell the title at its own stores, and distribute it to other shops around Japan through wholesalers.

“The reality of the industry today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for bricks-and-mortar bookstores to purchase copies of high-profile new books,” a Kinokuniya spokesperson told the Asahi Shimbun. “To rival online book retailers, bookstores across the country now need to join hands in efforts to reinvigorate the conventional book distribution market.”

Murakami has not “expressed any endorsement of the deal”, according to books site Publishing Perspectives. Kinokuniya board member Hitoshi Fujimoto told the site: “Our goal is complete fulfilment to the bookstores and improvement of margin (terms of sales). This is not an experiment but our new business with certain calculated risk.”

Published by Switch, Novelist As a Vocation collects essays Murakami has written for the literary magazine Monkey about life as a writer, with an extra 150 pages of new content. It is number five on Amazon.co.jp’s bestseller charts, more than two weeks ahead of publication and despite the reports of the deal with Kinokuniya.

The title will be the second new Murakami book to hit the Japanese market in recent weeks, following his release last month of Murakami-san no Tokoro (Mr Murakami’s Place). This collects the bestselling author’s responses to queries he received from his fans over a period of three-and-a-half months earlier this year, on everything from social problems to Tokyo’s baseball team. Neither title has yet been published in English, although two of Murakami’s early novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, are just out in translation.