K-Book Trends -

Search word : "Independent publishing", Search result : 26

[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

Knowledge Book Funding: Getting Closer to Readers 2026.03 The landscape of the Korean book market has shifted significantly since the online bookstore Aladin launched its Book Fund in 2018. This crowdfunding style platform was designed specifically for the pre-promotion of new titles. By 2024, all three major online bookstores in Korea had integrated their own dedicated funding systems. This marketing strategy has now become so mainstream that it is considered a standard step for any Korean publisher preparing to release a new book. Aladin Book Fund campaign example for If We Can’t Go at the Speed of Light. The funding systems of online bookstores offer a closer connection with readers than specialized crowdfunding platforms. Once the funding period ends and ge...

VOL.92 / 2026.03

[TREND / EXPORT CASE]

How Korean Books Are Conquering Russia: The Experience of MIF

Export Case How Korean Books Are Conquering Russia: The Experience of MIF 2025.06.02 In recent years, Korean literature has been steadily capturing the hearts of Russian readers. One of the advocates of K-literature in Russia is MIF Publishing House. In this article, we explore how MIF made the strategic decision to publish Korean books, the titles that have already resonated with readers, and what the future holds. Who We Are MIF Publishing is one of Russia’s largest independent publishing houses. Since 2005, we have been producing high-quality nonfiction for adults and children, including books on self-development, business, psychology, art, and science, as well as fiction for adults, young adults, and younger readers.Our backlist includes more than 5,000 titles, and we publish around 400 new books each year. Our authors range from bestselling international names to renowned Russian writers. We are active participants in the world’s leadin...

VOL.83 / 2025.06

[TREND / ONE-LINER QUOTES]

Suffering and Romance: Two Things Korea and Taiwan Share

One-Liner Quotes Suffering and Romance: Two Things Korea and Taiwan Share Picks of a foreign journalist living in Korea 2025.06.02 Wu Pei Ju (吳?如) is a freelance journalist based in Korea, and has written for newspapers and magazines in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She also runs the Korean literature podcast “Jeongyeol Hanbando” and the online Korean bookstore “Echo Islands” for readers in Chinese-speaking countries. She has translated Rest Area (Taiwanese edition). Around the time the Dec. 3 martial law was declared, I was editing and proofreading the Taiwanese edition of Beyond Death, Beyond the Dark Era (Changbi Publishers). It was hard to imagine the scenes in the book becoming reality, but they soon did. History is often distorted if it is not recorded. In this book, Hwang and two other authors recount the greed of the military dictatorship, ...

VOL.83 / 2025.06

[TREND / EXPORT CASE]

The “Anxiety of Youth” Crosses National Borders

Export Case The “Anxiety of Youth” Crosses National Borders 2025.05.07 What defines independent publishing? As publishing formats diversify and formerly “self-published authors” begin to compete by starting their own publishing houses, the question of what constitutes independent publishing has become a hot topic. In the absence of objective indicators, independent publisher Balcony defines independent publishing as follows: publishing that can entice readers with its own narrative without large-scale capital investment. In this sense, Yeon Jeong’s Tomorrow’s Sun Will Rise, But What About Tonight? can be considered one of the clear success stories of independent publishing.Before it was published by Balcony in 2020, Tomorrow’s Sun Will Rise, But What About Tonight? was an independent publication that Yeon Jeong wrote as a palm-sized book and distributed on a small scale. The publisher at Balcony discovered the book, which had been dis...

VOL.82 / 2025.05

[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

Write the Story You Want to Read

Knowledge Write the Story You Want to Read Self-publishing platforms in Korea: The reasons for growth and the current state 2024.11.04 “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” - Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 While there is no established academic definition, “self-publishing” refers to authors planning, editing, publishing, and distributing their own manuscripts without working through a publishing company. As opposed to “vanity publishing,” which involves paying an upfront fee to a publisher to produce and distribute a book, it is used almost interchangeably with “independent publishing” in Korea (some researchers and book critics use the two terms separately). The desire to document ...

VOL.76 / 2024.11

[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

Book Fairs, Another Type of Holiday

Knowledge Book Fairs, Another Type of Holiday 2024.07.01 When you work with books, you get to experience a yearly cycle of events. For small bookstores/publishers like Ghost Books, which is both a bookstore and a book maker, book releases are usually aligned with these events. This is because you can have quite good promotional effects by doing so, particularly if you publish fewer books and don’t have a great budget for marketing each book. As such, book fairs are very important for planning the year ahead. Aligning your publication schedule with these annual events gives you a clear guideline for managing the manuscript editing, designing interior layout and cover, and printing timelines.Over the past 8 years of running a small publishing house and bookstore, I have attended a number of book fairs. As I mentioned earlier, these events usually occur in a certain cycle. Meeting the authors that you have been seeing at a similar time and space every year is...

VOL.72 / 2024.07

[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

Today’s Local Bookstores Seen Through Data on Independent Bookstores in Korea

Knowledge Today’s Local Bookstores Seen Through Dataon Independent Bookstores in Korea A service for non-readers: a map of local bookstores 2024.05.07 Independent bookstores, each unique in its own way, are significant in that they create new cultures and book ecosystems. There is a platform that collects data on these independent bookstores and shares their locations, activities, and stories with readers online and offline ? it is “Bookshopmap,” a neighborhood bookstore map, which started in 2015. In this article, focusing on Bookshopmap, we will look at how the service started, how it works, and how it differs from traditional bookstores. We will also take a look at the changing trends of independent bookstores in Korea based on data statistics from the past 8 years, from 2015 to 2023. ...

VOL.70 / 2024.05

[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

How are Regional Publishers in Korea Thriving?

Publishing Industry How are Regional Publishers in Korea Thriving? Cooperation of local publishers seen through the Somewhere, Someone series 2023.03.13 I’m living in a village by the ocean in Goseong County, Gangwon-do Province. The first thing I do in the morning is take a walk on the shore in front of the village with my dog. Once I reach the shore, I take off the leash for him to move around freely, and check orders from bookstores on a number of applications. Sometimes, I sit in a corner, enter the logistics website, and start my morning work. Spending 3-4 minutes typing in the number of books and the name of the warehouse for the day is the most important task. Then, I put my dog back on the leash again, and head home.This was a dream 10 years back. Back then, the facsimile in one corner of the publishi...

VOL.56 / 2023.03

[TREND / BOOK TRIP]

The Jolly Shelter and Home of the Mangwon-dong Brothers!

Book Trip [Into the Book ⑦] The Jolly Shelter and Home of the Mangwon-dong Brothers! Mangwon-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul: The Harmony of the Old and the New 2024.02.19 Mangwon-dong Brothers Being invited to someone’s house is like being invited to see the real inside of them.(...) Years passed, and we ended up living together in an 8-pyeong room on a rooftop. Mangwon-dong Brothers (Namu Bench) is the first novel by writer Kim Ho-Yeon, who made readers in Korea and abroad both cry and laugh with her book The Uncanny Convenience Store (Namu Bench). It won the Excellence Award at the 9th World Literature Award and was later made into a play, proving both its literary value and popularity. The book Mangwon-dong Brothers is a full-length novel about four impoverished men who start an unusual live-in relationship in a rooftop room in Mangwon-dong -...

VOL.67 / 2024.02

[INTERVIEW / KOREAN PUBLISHERS]

Storybowl

Korean Publishers Storybowl A bowl that holds thoughtful, heartwarming stories 2025.12.01 Everyone, at least once in childhood, would have imagined something like this: a drawing on a blank sheet of paper suddenly popping out and speaking to you. Picture book author Baek Hee-Na brings that very imagination into reality - she creates three-dimensional dolls of her characters and places them into her scenes. With her fingertips, she delicately builds the world of her stories, transforming imagination into something tangible. In 2005, she was selected as “Illustrator of the Year” at the Bologna Ragazzi Awards, gaining recognition not only in Korea, but also abroad. In 2020, she became the first Korean recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, often called the Nobel Prize of children’s literature. Storybowl, a publishing house Baek Hee-Na founded to ensure a more creative and independent environment, is expanding the artistic universe beyond Korea and...

VOL.89 / 2025.12

VOL.93/2026.04

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