VOL.74/2024.09

 

Piper Press

A channel in which books and the world, authors and readers, connect and communicate

 

2024.08.05

 

The world is diversifying at a rapid pace. This change is also being witnessed in the publishing market. There is one company that is making a name for itself by creating a new wave in publishing, providing opportunities for everyone to write, encouraging authors with experience to thrive, and ultimately promoting diversity in publishing - Piper Press. Piper Press has not been in the publishing business for long, but it has been vitalizing the publishing market by bringing together a wide range of topics and authors in nonfiction.

 

 

It’s a pleasure to have you with us on K-Book Trends. Please briefly introduce Piper Press to our international readers and provide the meaning of the company’s name.

 

Hello, everyone. Thank you for having us. Piper Press is the publishing brand of Piper, a content firm that serializes experience-based nonfiction online and publishes in physical books. The name Piper is a combination of the words “pipe,” which means to connect, and “paper,” which refers to sheets of paper, text, or material. It reflects our goal to produce writings that connect authors and readers.

 

Web platform Piper launched in 2022, and the publishing brand Piper Press followed in 2023. What services does Piper offer, and why did Piper launch Piper Press?

 

Piper is a nonfiction content company that believes that we can make the world a better place by sharing each other’s experiences. The web platform, Piper, was created as a place where readers can subscribe to serialized nonfiction by authors and be connected to each other. Piper features freely written pieces by a variety of authors, including our own nonfiction series.
Piper Press is the publishing brand that publishes Piper’s serialized content in printed books. After initially launching on the web, we received a lot of requests from readers who wanted to collect the web serials as books. We realized that books were the most fulfilling way to satisfy the desire to consume and own content that online subscriptions and viewing doesn’t fulfill, as we watched how readers responded. We also considered the nature of nonfiction, different from that of fiction. Nonfiction readers tend to consume the topic of interest itself rather than the story. They want to own it. If the content is a mirror that reflects their interests and identity, then a book is a tangible object that allows them to own that content.

 

 

You also have a unique publishing method - authors serialize on the website first and then publish their works in physical form. Is there a particular reason for this method, and what do you see as its advantages or draws?

 

We don’t think that just “being a good book” is enough to be discovered and read by people, because getting noticed in a sea of content itself is quite challenging. We believe that by connecting authors to readers as well as content to readers through the serialization of works, we build a community of early readers who will support us when they are published. We anticipated that our books would be recognized by our subscribers not as one of many new books, but as a wonderful product of the writings they read and supported before they were even in print. Indeed, we often see subscribers buying and sharing our books first when they are published.
Authors can make their books while getting real-time feedback from readers. We think that authors get a clearer sense of their target audience as they receive feedback from readers through comments and DMs over the course of the serialization. We feel that the density of the text increases with each episode.

 

Piper provides an opportunity for anyone to write their own stories and makes it easier for anyone to publish a book. Do you have any advice for international readers who are interested in Korean books and writing to use these services?

 

Even if you are not a proficient Korean speaker, I think you will be able to write something with your own style. If you try to organize your writing based on your favorite expressions, or Korean expressions that you particularly like, you will probably come up with a new style of writing that Korean authors cannot do. The Piper platform provides a set of questions that you can use as an outline for your writing. If you fill them in with the idea of answering questions rather than writing, you will be able to write more high-quality text in Korean.

 

 

We realized that books were the most certain means
to satisfy people’s desire to consume and own content.

 

 

You have established yourself well in the publishing market. This seems to be driven by Piper Press’s unique identity and strengths. So, what do you think those are?

 

Thank you for saying that. We think it’s because we have been very clear from the beginning about where we are positioned. We are focusing on nonfiction that’s based on people’s experiences. Because it’s about things that are happening in the real world, things that people have experienced firsthand, it’s approachable to people who aren’t necessarily professional writers or people who have learned to write. And you don’t have to be a celebrity. In fact, of the 10 books that we have published so far, all of them are the debut works of authors, except for Jin-Young Jung’s book Novels Thrive on Failure. We have been able to see that as long as you have a clear topic, a vivid record, and a distinctive point of view, you can reach early readers, and if you move those early readers, your scale will grow. I think maybe what makes them interested is that we are creating Korean-style nonfiction, offering new authors and new topics.

 

Defining “experiences” as “the source of inspiration that prepares us for tomorrow and sets the direction of our lives,” you are publishing a series called The Experiences. Can you tell us a bit about the series?

 

The Experiences series has the motto of being a practical dictionary of experiences, written by people who have done it themselves. We aim for vivid knowledge with the perspective of the experienced. We believe that there is a perspective that only those who have done it can have, and we want our readers to be able to experience it vividly and indirectly through the eyes of those who have been there. So far, 6 titles have been published, from Perfume Collector’s Fragrance Note by vintage perfume collector ISP to City of Jazz by Kim So-Ri, a researcher and artist who is pursuing a PhD in jazz studies in New York. We are building the series around experiences in areas that readers would like to try right away and can start with, such as perfume, Tokyo, musical, novel writing, natural wine, and jazz.

 

* K-Book Trends Vol. 71 – Go to the introduction article of the book Perfume Collector’s Fragrance Note

 

 

We heard that you also run an offline workshop named “Read & Experience Club,” centered around the books in the The Experiences series. What has been the response from the participants?

 

We wanted people to read our books and feel a change in behavior that made them want to try something. An extension of that was the “Read & Experience Club.” We wanted to give people the opportunity to actually have an experience. For those who read Perfume Collector’s Fragrance Note and got interested in fragrance notes and perfumes, we would organize a perfume testing session, and for those who read Novels Thrive on Failure and wanted to start writing fiction, we would organize a fiction workshop with an author who is a writer.
As the books that are not part of The Experiences series are also experience-based nonfiction, we have been doing workshops in the same way. We recently held a “Spatial Sensitivity Workshop” with Jeon Myeong-Hee of Byeoljip Real Estate, author of Finding My Home - Cultivating Spatial Sensitivity with Real Estate Curator. We feel that it’s really rare to have a gathering like this with such a high-density conversation. We think this is because it’s a group of people who are interested in the same topic, have read the book, and feel the urge to put it into action.

 

 

What areas have you been interested in lately?

 

We have been interested in health and aging lately. We think it’s a field where it’s hard to filter out trustworthy information because there’s a lot of commercial content. Still, we are working on it because we believe that there are people waiting for candidly written stories about healthy living from people who have planned and practiced for a healthy life.

 

 

We want to discover more voices from people
who seem ordinary but are in some way new and interesting.

 

 

You have been publishing a wide range of books that pique the interest and curiosity of readers. Could you recommend any books that you would like to introduce to international readers?

 

First of all, we would like to recommend Seoul’s Architecture Trip - Seeing Seoul Through the Lens of Time, a book that will help you discover the hidden charms and stories of Seoul, to our international readers. When you become deeply interested in a place, you become curious about not only the present, past, and its image, but also its story. We chose this book because it presents stories from Seoul’s near past in today’s Seoul in an interesting way.

 

* K-Book Trends Vol. 70 – Go to the introduction article of the book Seoul’s Architecture Trip – Seeing Seoul Through the Lens of Time

 

Another book we would like to recommend is recently published Finding My Home - Cultivating Spatial Sensitivity with Real Estate Curator, a book that anyone who lives in a big city anywhere in the world can relate to. The author, a licensed real estate broker with an architecture degree, explains that even in a small house or an old building, you can find a “home” filled with “your own colors” through concrete examples and philosophy. If it is also applicable in a densely populated city like Seoul, wouldn’t it be possible to find your own home anywhere in the world?

 

Seoul’s Architecture Trip – Seeing Seoul Through the Lens of Time
and Finding My Home – Cultivating Spatial Sensibility with Real Estate Curator

 

 

Piper Press continues to build its own identity, producing content that’s fun to read, like webnovels, as well as the The Experiences series. We are excited to see what’s next for Piper Press as you continue to try new and fresh things. Can you tell us about your plans for upcoming books and future goals?

 

We think the era where the content market is dominated by the stories of a few celebrities or the elite is over. We are hearing more voices from people who seem ordinary, but are in some way new and interesting. This trend is only going to get stronger in publishing. At Piper, we are trying to recognize this change and discover more people’s experiences. We believe that everyone’s experiences have the power to both inform and inspire others. Our goal is to have the capabilities and systems in place to turn those experiences into content.

 

 

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