Like many small book fairs around the world (see our recent articles on the Buenos Aires and Jerusalem Book Fairs for a few examples), the Seoul International Book Fair (SIBF), a once domestic and consumer-directed event, is looking to professionalize and internationalize its image. In the past 5 years, major funding and programming from the Korean Publishers Association (which founded the Fair in 1995) has significantly grown the number of international agents, scouts, and editors who attend, including those from outside Asia. Even within South Korea, editors and agents who once wrote off the event as a noisy market where children’s publishers hawked their wares say they have begun attending again, with renewed interest in the event’s professional potential.
Historically, setting up a stand at SIBF served principally as a way for Korean publishers to sell their books directly and “to introduce their name-brand value to the public,” says Michelle Nam, Executive Director of Minumsa Publishing. She points to the Korean-language SIBF Facebook page as evidence of the event’s ongoing success as a consumer brand in its own right: as of this writing, SIBF has over 11,750 Likes on Facebook, representing a popularity far beyond the bounds of the Korean publishing profession. (Compare these numbers to just over 12,000 Likes on the Frankfurt Book Fair’s main Facebook page, and 7,700 for the London Book Fair). Events aimed at readers remain popular, as do “refurbished” books, sold by their original publishers at steep discount prices, reports Jungha Song, Foreign Rights Senior Manager at Sigongsa. All these factors point to an event that has been successful and widely known among consumers: they are the target audience, and they attend in droves to buy large quantities of books at discount prices.
But increasingly, popularity among consumers isn’t the kind of cache that the Korean Publishers Association (KPA) think it most important for the SIBF to cultivate. “We are trying to turn the SIBF into one of the main copyright trade-oriented book fairs in the region,” says Seung-Hyun Moon, Director of the KPA’s International Project department, and the shift is palpable in a number of ways. Tables in the Rights Center are still free to all applicants, but general admission to the event, long free, now costs 3,000 won (still only about $2). Over a third of this year’s 620 exhibitors are international and hail from 25 countries, more than ever before.
At first, says Tae-Eun Kim, English and European Rights Director at the Shinwon Agency, “more foreign publishers/agencies came for selling translation rights [to Korean publishers.] But the number of those coming to buy translation rights is now increasing.” While most Japanese publishers and agencies still come to the SIBF to sell their rights to Korean publishers (the popularity of Japanese titles in South Korea is longstanding), Michelle Nam observes that “Chinese, Taiwanese, and Thai publishers are increasingly coming to buy and discuss Korean books.” The KPA has devoted extensive funds to supporting the travel and attendance of these international Asian publishers, particularly Southeast Asian companies, which represent an increasingly important market for Korean publishers. SIBF’s 2013 International Guest of Honor is India, and “I can think of at least one major Thai publisher who attends SIBF almost every year, but not Bologna or London,” says Jungha Song.
Shifting the SIBF to be more international is affecting the Korean publishing industry as a whole. Henry Shin of the Eric Yang Literary Agency reports that the SIBF “has accelerated even small Korean publishers to actively export their rights…and to include foreign readers as their potential customers in the developmental stage of Korean content.” Until recently, publishing in South Korea has been primarily inward-facing, making it logical for the largest annual Korean book event to target primarily local readers. “SIBF continues to be very important for domestic publishers to show and promote their new products. If it becomes a trade book fair, the number of exclusively domestic exhibitors would be reduced—the common impasse for any international book fair in Asia right now,” observes Duran Kim, President of the Duran Kim Literary Agency.
For now, the SIBF continues a balancing act, says Seung-Hyun Moon, “providing opportunities to meet and sell to readers directly, and also to meet international professionals for selling rights.” Reflecting on this, several Korean agents and rights directors drew the comparison to BookExpo America. While BEA tries to make room for a more direct-to-reader approach (with the Power Readers program, among others), SIBF searches for more professional international relationships. Whether its new international identity finally overtakes its homegrown roots will most likely rest with South Korean publishers themselves, who will eventually decide whether the key to their success lies on the sales floor with local readers or at a table in the Rights Center, hoping to reach readers in the global market.
Related reading:
How Korea Promotes Its Literature and Writers to the World from Publishing Perspectives
South Korea’s Embrace of Multiculturalism Could Galvanize Publishing from Publishing Perspectives
Culturally Hip Korea Blames Digital Devices for the Decline in Reading, Publishing Perspectives’ report from SIBF 2013.
Minumsa: Witness of Korean publishing history from The Korea Times
Literature Translation Institute of Korea
