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Search word : "Independent Bookstores",   Search result : 36
[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

The Expansion of Korea’s Picture Book Market

Knowledge   The Expansion of Korea’s Picture Book Market   2026.01.05   At some point, Korean picture books began making headlines. Korean authors are now frequent winners of Italy’s Bologna Ragazzi Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the field. They have also produced award recipients of the Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava (BIB) Award?one of the world’s oldest international picture book festivals, launched in 1967?as well as Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, often described as the Nobel Prize in children’s literature; the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest honor bestowed upon authors and illustrators of children’s literature; and France’s most prestigious children’s literature prize, the Prix Sorci?res. Plus, countless Korean picture books have been exported to countries around the world, earning the love of readers internationally. Most importantly, picture books have become central to Korea’s reading culture, ...
  • VOL.90 / 2026.01
[TREND / TOPIC]

Expanding the World of Books Through Book-Themed Merchandise

Topic   Expanding the World of Books Through Book-Themed Merchandise   2025.12.01   The craze for book-themed merchandise   At bookstores and book fairs across the country, what catches the eye as much as the books themselves these days is book-themed merchandise. From bookmarks, postcards, and stickers to keyrings, T-shirts, book covers, incense, and drip-bag coffee, objects orbiting around books have now become a form of publishing content in their own right. According to Kyobo Book Centre’s statistics, sales of reading accessories in 2024 rose by 28% compared to the previous year. The trend was evident at this year’s Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF), where nearly every publisher’s booth displayed merchandise beside their books, and readers purchased these items with enthusiasm equal to the books themselves.Some criticize this shift, arguing that merchandise is overshadowing books and accelerating the commercialization of publishing. However, the ph...
  • VOL.89 / 2025.12
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Life and Community Built Through Books: Gochang Book Village

Topic   Life and Community Built Through Books: Gochang Book Village   2025.11.03   In Gochang, Jeonbuk State, there is “Gochang Book Village (고창서점마을).” Officially opened on October 11, 2025, it is Korea’s first village of bookstores, bringing together six independent bookstores that each specialize in distinct genres - philosophy, graphic novels, ecology, travel, and picture books. Why, in an era when even large bookstores in bustling cities struggle to survive, did these individuals gather in a small rural town? Lee Yoon-Ho (이윤호), the village head, recounts how Gochang Book Village - created by a diverse group of people including literary critics, planners, and teachers who dreamed of England’s famous book town Hay-on-Wye - came into being.   View of Gochang Book Village     How Gochang Book Village was born   The creation of Gochang Book Village began by chance....
  • VOL.88 / 2025.11
[TREND / KNOWLEDGE]

Models for Supporting Connections between Local Bookstores and Libraries

Knowledge   Models for Supporting Connectionsbetween Local Bookstores and Libraries   2025.10.02   The publishing market is said to be facing increasing difficulties day by day. The most fundamental problem is the decline in the reading rate - in other words, the shrinking number of readers. However, rather than lamenting the decrease in readers, now is the time to make efforts to sustain and expand the readership. Then, what are the things that move most closely with readers for the promotion of reading? Libraries and local bookstores. According to the Value-Added Tax Act Article 8 of the Publishing Industry Promotion Act, a local bookstore refers to a bookstore that registers as a retail business for books and is operated by a small or medium-sized enterprise in accordance with Article 2 of the Framework Act on Small and Medium Enterprises. In this article, however, the term “local bookstore” encompasses independent bookstores, curated bookstores, and concept...
  • VOL.87 / 2025.10
[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 / TOPIC]

The Art of Selling Books: Innovative Strategies by Korean Booksellers

Topic   The Art of Selling Books:Innovative Strategies by Korean Booksellers   2024.11.04   You will be able to find the figures for “reading preferences” in the results of the National Reading Survey conducted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in Korea last year. It gives a hint to the “actual” reading population based on the ratio of people liking books. The overall reading rate covering paper books, e-books, and audio books was 95.8% for elementary, middle, and high school students and 43.0% for adults; the actual reading preferences turned out to be 39.6% for students and 18.3% for adults. The actual reading rate, which means readings done autonomously, is cut in half from the overall reading rate as the overall figure includes cases in which people have to read books for necessary reasons, such as for work or educational purposes. Why do people read books, but have very few “enjoyable” experiences reading them? Well, consi...
  • VOL.76 / 2024.11
[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
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South Korea's publishing market and distribution structure

South Korea's publishing market and distribution structure   2019.12.09   South Korea's publishing market can be divided into three categories: book publishing (paper media publishing), educational publishing (textbooks and educational material publishing) and internet/mobile digital publishing and production. When taken as a whole, publishing sales stood at 4.0078 trillion won in 2010 and rose 8.2 percent to 4.3388 trillion won in 2017, showing an average growth of 1.1 percent each year in between. A characteristic of South Korea's publishing market is that educational content accounts for a huge piece of it. From 2010 to 2017, educational publishing has seen an average 1.8 percent in growth while paper book sales have seen an average decline of 2.6 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, e-books have seen sharp growth, with sales jumping 17 percent on average each year from 2010 to 2017.   A characteristic of South Korea's publishing market is that educational co...
  • VOL.18 / 2019.12
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South Korea's policies to promote reading and reading movements

South Korea's policies to promote reading and reading movements   2019.11.04   In addition to smartphones, media bombards people daily, whether they take the form of regular information, videos or other forms of entertainment. As this sort of content increases and more forms of leisure appear, concerns over people reading fewer books are also growing. According to statistics, the reading rate of South Korean adults over the age of 19 (reading rate of paper books that are not textbooks, educational material, magazines or comic books) stood at 86.8 percent in 1994 only to plummet to 59.9 percent in 2017 (the rate was 62.3 percent when e-books were accounted for). On average, the rate dropped 1 percentage point every year over that period. When compared to the reading rates of underage students from elementary school students to high school students that top 90 percent, the adult reading rates are not to be ignored. South Koreans have long upheld traditional values related to s...
  • VOL.17 / 2019.11
[TREND / TOPIC]

Fandom and Publishing

Topic   Fandom and Publishing Trend in the Korean publishing market in 2022   2022.09.05   I have talked with a number of editors from publishing companies about “profitable books.” They all said, “The results are mostly determined by how influential the author is. How many readers it can attract is also one of the key points of signing a contract.”While fewer people are reading books, more people hope to write books today. So, among the manuscripts flooding in, the writers who sign the contract at the end are those who are influential. The marketing capacity of the publisher is indeed important. But, in this market where capital decides the marketing power, it is more likely that you must bring in “people that don’t read” to make a book go best seller. Thus, it is clear that a publishing company prefers to publish books by those with a strong fandom, created before publication.      ...
  • VOL.50 / 2022.09
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