VOL.93/2026.04

Korean Publishers

 

The Future of Our Society as Told by an Editor from Maybooks

 

 

2026.04

 

 

Maybooks is a publishing house that looks toward people. The books published by Maybooks, such as People on the Edge, Workers, Falling Down, What Is Your Gender?, and The Perspective of Disability Studies, pay attention to the marginalized in our society. Through the voice of an editor, we aim to examine how Maybooks views our society and how it accompanies the marginalized through books.

 

 

 

 

 

Q. Please give a brief introduction of yourself. Also, from an editor's perspective, could you briefly introduce what kind of books Maybooks publishes?

 

Hello. I am Lim Se-hyun, and I have been working as an editor at Maybooks for ten years. Since joining in 2016, I have published various books across a wide range of fields and topics, including feminism, disability studies, anthropology, philosophy, history, literary criticism, labor issues, and environmental issues. With the sentence "Another world is possible" in our hearts, Maybooks publishes books that reflect on Korean society and the global order surrounding us, as well as books containing progressive and radical ideas. To be more specific, I could say we mainly present books that focus on the lives of people living in various marginalized positions while persistently questioning the society and structures that exclude them. The phrase you introduced, "a publishing house that looks toward people," is a truly impressive and grateful descriptor.

 

 

 

 

 

Q. Maybooks has formed a dedicated fanbase and is well-loved in the fields of humanities and social sciences. If you were to describe the core message that Maybooks seeks to deliver to society through publishing in just one word, what would it be?

 

I would choose our catchphrase I mentioned earlier, "Another world is possible." If I had to pick just one word, it would certainly be "another world." I believe this term effectively contains our commitment to suggesting that there is something wrong with the current global order, while simultaneously contemplating those problems to foster alternatives, perspectives, and the imagination for a new way of life.

 

 

 

 

Q. Among the books published by Maybooks, is there a specific title you would especially recommend to overseas subscribers?

 

I would like to recommend Try and Erase Us All You Want, See If We Disappear (written by Choi Na-hyun, Yang So-young, and Kim Se-hee) to overseas subscribers. This work shows that the civic rallies following recent political events in Korean society are closely linked to the "Feminism Reboot" movement that began around 2015. I highly recommend it because it contains the ongoing, living history of Korean feminism. This book was planned as an interview collection focusing on young women who voluntarily took to the squares after the civic rallies in December 2024. While there are now several books covering the civic rallies and the stories of the young women who participated, such works were rare at the time of publication (April–May 2025). Most importantly, the book is uniquely meaningful in the way it weaves the experience of the civic rallies into the overall life histories of young women in their 10s to 30s who live with diverse identities. It demonstrates that citizen solidarity has continued through the flow of the Feminism Reboot, including the Gangnam Station misogynistic murder case, the "Black Protest" for the abolition of the abortion ban, and the Hyehwa Station rallies denouncing biased investigations into illegal filming. It is a book that vividly shows how the trajectory of this movement opened a new space for solidarity and voice, leading to a shared vision for our society and the world.

 

 

 

 

Q. What sets Maybooks apart from other publishers in the Korean publishing industry?

 

There has been a dominant evaluation that has followed our publishing house for a long time, and it remains the same today: “Maybooks publishes books that are very important and essential, but they don't actually sell well.” I find this assessment of “books that don't sell well” to be quite significant. After all, saying they don't sell well implies that there is no reader base, but I wonder if it can be so definitively stated. Of course, we cannot compare to bestsellers that target the absolute majority of readers, but our publishing house plans books with the belief that there are more readers than one might think who have quite different desires for “reading” and “study.” Furthermore, an increasing number of people are choosing lifestyles that deviate from the mainstream.

 

Therefore, I believe it is truly important to reflect those diverse desires in our books, and on the other hand, to work on discovering or even inventing those desires through books. I think such a mindset and approach toward our work are what set our publishing house apart from others that revolve around bestsellers. In the actual process of making and promoting books, there are many moments when we confirm that readers who have been waiting for the books we make truly exist in reality.

 

A representative example is the subject of "disability" or "disability studies." About ten years ago, when our publishing house first started releasing related books, disability was often perceived as a dead topic with almost no reader base. But that is not the case at all now. Even major publishing houses are now actively jumping into related themes. I feel proud of this part. I am very happy that we seem to have contributed to making a subject—one that most officials easily dismissed by saying "this book won't sell"—gain this much of a reader base and importance in today’s publishing market. In a way, the publisher is constantly learning and growing together with the readers. Of course, there are many other publishers and brands making similar attempts besides us, which serves as a very good motivation for us.

 

 

 

 

Q. What are the future vision and goals of Maybooks?

 

First and foremost, our most important vision and goal is, of course, to continue introducing various high-quality projects to our readers. It is true that the non-fiction market is becoming increasingly difficult due to the use of AI and other factors, but I believe that, on the other hand, the demand and desire for "books that are more like books" and "something that can only be obtained from a book" are becoming even stronger. Therefore, we must contemplate the inevitability and necessity of why certain topics or contents must be presented through the medium of a book, and consistently explore what kind of composition and format can embody them. If we can create a single book in any format, without limits, that contains the themes, perspectives, and messages we want to explore—all while not giving up on both the number of titles and the quality of individual books—I could ask for nothing more.

 

 

 

 

 

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Written by Se Hyun, Lim (Editor)

She has been working as an editor at Maybooks for ten years. She has planned and edited numerous books, including A Purely Literary Taste, The World That Met Wills, The Road Home, Songs of Warriors, Beasts of Burden, The Challenge of Disability Studies, The Geography of Disaster, Try and Erase Us All You Want, See If We Disappear, and The Era Without Family.