VOL.84/2025.07

Your Good Sense of Backing in Good Books

Based on the example of online bookstore Aladin

2025.06.02

Why “Book Fund”?

Online bookstore Aladin’s Book Fund program was first launched in 2012. The initial program allowed accounts to back up to 50,000 won to fund publishing projects. Publishers benefited by being able to raise money for pre-publication production costs, customers benefited by being able to earn up to 130% of their support back as bookstore credit if the book they funded became an overall bestseller, and booksellers benefited by being able to build an early audience of avid readers willing to support in upcoming titles. However, this design could not have a direct influence on the success of the book after publication, as it did not directly link the Book Fund to actual purchases of the book.
In 2022, the web novel Return of the Blossoming Blade (Luff Media) was widely publicized in the media for its book funding on the crowdfunding platform Tumblr, where it reached 3,202% of its goal with 23,888 backers. Typically, funding requires a two-month wait between the backing and delivery. The presence of enthusiastic fans who are willing to wait this long is what creates buzz and convinces other readers. The support of those passionate fans can help ensure that a title makes a successful landing in the market.
In 2018, bookstore Aladin’s Book Fund was revamped into a full-fledged crowdfunding program. The current Book Fund is designed as follows.

With the revamp in 2018, Aladin’s Book Fund introduced four titles to the world. The first book, 97 Times of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, a compilation of 30 years of journals written by Lee Ok-Nam, a woman born in 1922 in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, who learned to write later in life after farming and raising children, reached 506% of its funding target and received 50 supportive comments on the Book Fund page. The comments from supporters are still up on the book’s product page. Fans who participated in the Book Fund for Devotion, a book about her writing by Patti Smith, the musician who endeared herself to Korean readers with Just Kids, were rewarded with a set of a pin badge and a wappen badge that proves they were early funders.

The good sense of backing in good books

According to statistics released by the Korean Publishers Association in 2024, the 71 publishers that disclosed their sales totaled approximately 4.89 trillion won, a decrease of 0.1% (approximately 5.2 billion won) from the previous year. The difficulties in the publishing market are highlighted by the fact that the overall market size shrank in 2024 despite the increase in sales of Changbi Publishers (67.6% year-on-year increase in sales) and Munhakdongne Publishing (43.6% year-on-year increase in sales), which published books by Nobel Prize-winning author Han Kang.
Publishers and readers alike know that the Korean publishing market is struggling to thrive. To address the reality of new releases disappearing quickly from shelves, publishers are turning to pre-publication crowdfunding as one solution. Readers respond to publisher initiatives by participating in crowdfunding campaigns for books they want to read, even before they are published. Beyond the practical benefits gained through funding, such as early delivery or exclusive rewards, participating in crowdfunding also adds a sense of support and anticipation for the book, which readers back in with the hope of receiving books they can't get elsewhere, with no customer reviews of this book.
Aladin runs Book Funds with the catchphrase, “The Good Sense of Backing Good Books.” Just as everyone has their favorite books, the MD responsible for promotions has their own criteria for what makes a good book. With the idea of selecting books that can inspire change, make you feel good, expand your thoughts, or shape your attitude, they try to introduce these books to readers through the Book Fund as much as possible. Readers’ eyes are drawn to books that they like, and to books that they think are good. The aspirational heart discovers books with a sharp concept. For example, the SF anthology, Topia: Short Story Collection Set (Yoda Books), by Kwak Jae-Sik, Kim Cho-Yeop, and others, which depicts utopia and dystopia through scientific imagination, raised 11,641,500 won, and the queer fiction anthology, There’s No One But You, Sis (QQ Books), by Chung Se-Rang, Han Jung-Hyeon, and others, raised 14,497,140 won. Another anthology about books and bookstores, Trapped In Books (Gufic Publishing), by Song Kyung-Ah and Cheon Seon-Ran, raised 5,201,420 won.
Kim Cho-Yeop’s first short story collection, If We Cannot Move at the Speed of Light (EAST-ASIA Publishing), met readers first through Aladin’s Book Fund as part of the pre-launch promotion for its selection as the “First Book in Summer” at the Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF) in June 2019. In anticipation of the first book by a new author, a science major who won both the grand prize and honorable mention in the short- to mid-length story category at the 2nd Korean Science and Literature Award, 193 Book Fund backers chose the title. The book went further with the support of readers. The book, If We Cannot Move at the Speed of Light, sold 100,000 copies in its first year of publication and has reached nearly 400,000 Korean readers to date. The book was exported to more than 10 countries, including Harper Collins in the US, and won both the Galaxy and Nebula Awards, two of China’s top SF literary awards.

Book Funds are the perfect outlet for revisiting books that are too good to let pass. To mark the fifth anniversary of the passing of poet Heo Soo-Kyung (1964-2018), author of The House I Go Alone (Moonji Publications), published in 1992, 215 readers supported How Many Things There Were in the Light That Couldn’t Be Done (Moonji Publications), an anthology in which 56 poets hand-picked poems by Heo Soo-Kyung that they would recommend. Printed on the front and back of the book, these readers’ names wrap around the poets’ poems.
The Korean Women’s Literature Collection (Minumsa Publishing Group), a monumental research project by the Women’s Literary History Society that begins with Kim Myung-Soon, Korea’s first female modern novelist in the 1900s and continues with Han Kang in the 1990s, was also introduced through a Book Fund. By raising 28,046,400 won, more than nine times its goal, readers responded to the passion of researchers who have been charting the genealogy of Korean women’s literature since 2012. Another book, I Pour, Pour My Heart Into It (Pinned Books), a short story collection by Kim Myung-Soon to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of the collection The Fruit of Life, was also published in May 2025, in response to the readers’ choice.

Hoping for a sustainable ecosystem

Aladin’s Book Fund, which featured 12 titles in 2018, introduced 279 titles in 2024. All three of Korea’s so-called big online bookstores now have a funding system, with Yes 24 launching a book funding service in July 2021 and online Kyobo Book Centre starting a book funding service in September 2024. Just as bookstores can choose which books to promote in light of “Your Good Sense of Backing Good Books,” publishers can also choose which platforms to use, which has resulted in an increase in the absolute number of funded books, making it difficult for each funding to stand out. The market in 2025 is a different picture from the one in 2018, when 50 supportive comments greeted Lee Ok-Nam’s first book. Some readers of genre fiction are selecting and deciding on titles that don’t need to rely on funding on the basis of “popular titles” published by “big companies” that are guaranteed to sell, and they are not happy to see these titles introduced in the form of crowdfunding.

Our peers, the people who sell books in Korea, have been walking through the narrow tunnel in creative ways. Will we find the answer? What we should trust is the discerning eye of readers. The market will continue to open tomorrow as we keep walking down that same path.

Written by Kim Hyo-Seon (MD of Korean fiction and poetry department at Aladin)