REMINDER: these occasional newsletters are intended to offer insights for writers about book publishing. I get that reading about our agency’s meetings at the Seoul Book Fair doesn’t seem like an obvious way to improve your understanding of Irish, British or American book publishing. All I can say is that I learned a lot in the week we spent in Korea about the way things work here.
Korean fiction is having a moment. Some Korean books are selling very well largely thanks to both teenage and New Adult (18-30) readers everywhere. These generations seek out books from beyond their world. They relish the qualities in Korean writing that make it distinctive.
Translated fiction is traditionally a small niche within UK and US book publishing. Occasionally an author breaks out globally, like say Stieg Larsson, Elena Ferrante or Haruki Murakami. Sometimes a whole genre from a country or region finds a global audience simultaneously. Think Nordic Noir, that strong trend for Scandinavian crime writing that is bleak, morally complex and written in a clear spare style — or in the case of Korea, “Healing Fiction”.
“Healing Fiction” is the label given to those soft warm uplifting stories, usually by Japanese or Korean authors, that tell of magical locales where people visit and have their spirits renewed. DallerGut Dream Department Store and Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop are two best-selling Korean examples.
International publishers, particularly in the UK and Italy, where Korean and Japanese fiction is doing very well are buying up every book they can find within the genre known as “Healing Fiction”. It’s popular with American publishers too but they are not looking at Korean writing through such a narrow lens as many UK editors now are.
My young agent colleague Edwina de Charnacé has been enjoying significant success in the past year selling Korean fiction to British and American publishers. Edwina is a refined reader who has a gift for delineating good writing and is confident in her choices. But only one of her many titles is part of the Healing Fiction genre. She’d be happy to sell more Healing Fiction, but we have one huge concern.
We know how publishing tends to jump on any trend in bestselling books. A genre finds a big readership and publishers feed more of the same into that niche. Those running a publishing imprint see a hungry readership and therefore a reliable source of book sales. They instruct their editors to hunt for more of the same. In a market like the book industry where uncertainty reigns and most books fail to sell in significant number, it makes sense to hunt for trends that promise revenue.
There’s a problem though. Publishers fail to take account of the cumulative impact of everyone chasing the reader. Often the awareness that their competitors are chasing the same book slots cause them to accelerate their efforts. They try to get their Healing Fiction into the bookshops faster, and like lemmings impelled by each other into a frenzied chase they rush towards the cliff, over the edge and into the chasm of no readers/no revenue because the trend is suddenly ‘so over’. There are too many books for the number of interested readers. Inevitably lots of the books fail (to sell).
Sometimes it’s hilarious.
Did you notice the “Colouring Books” trend some years ago? For a while every UK publisher was throwing as many of these as they could find at book retailers. British adults embraced the fad intensely for a bit. Of course, it imploded. Then there were ten times as many colouring books as there were people with coloured pencils poised to fill them in.
Another example was the glut of psychological thrillers in the wake of the massive success enjoyed by Gone Girl and Girl on A Train. There were plenty of fans of the genre, but in the end there were too many psychological thrillers being published even for the substantial readership. The sales were spread between too many titles. Lots of psychological thrillers sold near nothing. Then publishers became reluctant to acquire any more, irrespective of merit.
Most relevant to Korea was the recent damage done to contemporary Italian writing in the wake of the huge success of Elena Ferrante’s novels. After Ferrante’s international book sales exploded, UK and US publishers acquired everything they could from Italy. Far more Italian translations appeared than could be sustained. Now an Italian publisher friend bemoans the huge challenge of selling even the best Italian fiction for English translation.
Our concern is that UK publishers will lump together a collapse in interest in Korean Healing Fiction (due to over-publishing) with all other Korean fiction and scale back their acquisition of other Korean genres. Why would they do that? Because most of the buyers and readers of Korean fiction don’t have a strong understanding of its roots and its range. There are so many more forms of Korean fiction with international appeal than Healing Fiction.
In our small way, the agency is attempting to contribute a solution by representing a much wider range of Korean writing. We’re hunting for Korean non-fiction books that offer an insight into Korea through its society, cultural practices and history. We’re looking at titles that consider Korean styles of parenting, Korean social norms and notions of shame, Korean food and the state of Korean feminism. If we can lure Western readers to one of these titles, then we hope they will become more assured in their sense of Korea and feel more confidently curious in exploring a greater range of Korean novels.
Asked to name a Korean literary talent, most readers would know the brilliant author Han Kang. If you haven’t read her, try Human Acts. A warning: this is writing at its fiercest and most unsettling. Writers of her quality are rare anywhere. Edwina has identified at least two Korean literary voices of exceptional merit. What a tragedy if their future sales potential in the UK and US were undermined by publishers’ overcorrection to the inevitable future fall in sales of Healing Fiction.
In case you think I’m fretting unnecessarily; it’s been reported that one large UK publisher has seven Healing Fiction titles being published in 2025. That must mean there over twenty (perhaps nearer thirty) Healing Fiction titles being published in the UK in 2025.
Read more from me on Korean fiction’s next move:
Edwina’s passion for Korean writing has an extra level.
Though she hasn’t lived in Korea, her mother is Korean and Edwina was raised in Asia. Her success in finding and selling new books is powered by an admiring affection for her mother’s home country — a joy amongst her tribe. I understand this feeling exactly. I will own my special pleasure in selling my Irish writers or indeed at seeing any Irish author succeed internationally.
Read Edwina on the K-POP definition of ‘bias’:
A huge thank you to everyone who buys contemporary fiction and reads widely.
As ever,
Ivan
[ENDS]