'Screencellar' wave sweeps South Korea's bookstores as fiction surges

Fiction dominated South Korea's bookstore scene in the first half of this year, driven by a wave of "screencellers" — source novels adapted into films or drama series — while reader interest in both Korean and international literature climbed.

Investment books also gained popularity in the business and economics category as the domestic stock market enjoyed an unprecedented bull run.

Fiction staged a full comeback in the publishing market during the first half of the year.

According to data released Thursday by the Korea Publishing Industry Promotion Agency's integrated book distribution network, fiction and related products sold 3,969,575 copies in the January–May period, the highest of any of the 19 general book categories — excluding children's, young adult and study titles. Revenue from fiction reached 61.6 billion won (about $44.4 million), second only to the social sciences category, which posted 82.97 billion won (about $59.9 million) despite carrying a higher average price.

Broadening the lens to include poetry, essays and other literary forms, the appeal of literature becomes even more pronounced. The biography, literature and literary studies category — which encompasses poetry, prose and drama — sold 3,487,565 copies and generated 57.23 billion won (about $41.3 million) in the first half, ranking third among the 19 categories.

Combined, fiction, poetry, essays and other literary categories accounted for 16.4 percent of total book sales by volume in the first half.

Online bookseller Yes24 also reported that sales in the fiction, poetry and drama category rose 9.0 percent year-on-year in the first half.

The dominance of fiction was equally visible on bestseller lists. Of the top 100 titles tracked by the distribution network from January through May, 19 were novels — and among general books excluding study titles, seven of the top 10 were fiction.

At Yes24, 22 novels appeared in the overall top 100 bestsellers for the first half — roughly four times the five that made the list in the same period of 2024. That figure also represents a 37.5 percent increase over the 16 that appeared in the first half of 2025, when fiction was already riding high on Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature win.

The most striking trend was the resurgence of source novels brought back into the spotlight through films, streaming services, YouTube and other media — a phenomenon dubbed "screencellers." These titles became a major engine for fiction and the broader publishing market alike.

Andy Weir's 2021 novel "Project Hail Mary," the source for the film of the same name that opened in March, topped the distribution network's general book sales chart and claimed the No. 1 spot on Yes24's overall bestseller list. After the film's release, Yes24 sales of the book jumped roughly 58-fold — a 5,731.7 percent increase — compared with the same period last year. It marked the first time a foreign novel had topped Yes24's overall bestseller list on a first-half or full-year basis since "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" led the annual chart in 2014, a gap of 12 years. "Project Hail Mary" simultaneously topped the print and e-book sales charts and ranked first in downloads on the Crema Club platform, symbolizing the screencellar phenomenon that bridges film and publishing.

"Jamong Salgu Club" by singer-author Han Roro rode the popularity of the accompanying song to rank second on the distribution network's overall chart (excluding study titles). Yes24 data showed that readers in their 20s accounted for the largest share of purchases at 32.7 percent.

"Goethe Said It All" held a spot in Yes24's weekly top 10 for 14 consecutive weeks — from the first week of January through the first week of April — after film critic Lee Dong-jin recommended it on YouTube, ultimately climbing to third on the distribution network's overall chart.

Yang Gwi-ja's 1998 novel "Contradiction," which posted sales growth for three consecutive years from 2023 to 2025, again ranked fourth overall in the first half of this year. Readers in their 20s and 30s made up 41.4 percent of purchases on Yes24, demonstrating that the novel's universal themes of life choices and personal growth still resonate with young readers nearly three decades after publication.

"Goodbye, I Said," a short story collection by Kim Ae-ran released last June — her first in eight years — generated considerable buzz at launch and re-entered the top five overall in the first half after a sales rebound following the author's appearance on a television talk show.

"A pattern clearly emerged in which older titles regained the spotlight and climbed to the very top of the bestseller charts, triggered by media exposure such as film adaptations or celebrity recommendations," a Yes24 official said. "The trend of powerful stories — ones that remain beloved over time — being rediscovered through various media and sustaining long-term popularity has solidified as a core formula for the publishing market."

World literature also played a significant role in fiction's resurgence. First-half sales of foreign novels on Yes24 rose 25.9 percent year-on-year, while sales of the top 50 foreign novel titles jumped 150.6 percent.

Notably, 31 of those top 50 titles were classic works published before 2000, reflecting a growing reader preference for narratively proven stories. Representative titles included Hermann Hesse's "Demian," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince" and Albert Camus's "The Stranger."

Younger readers drove much of the growth. First-half foreign novel purchases by readers in their 20s and 30s jumped 29.7 percent and 33.0 percent, respectively, compared with the same period last year.

Meanwhile, outside fiction, investment books stood out as a notable bright spot. With the Kospi repeatedly breaking all-time highs, interest in investing has risen sharply across society. "Stock Investment for Progress" reached 10th place on the distribution network's overall chart, while "The Equation of Money" (11th), "The Minimum Economics You Need to Survive in the Age of Capitalism" (13th) and "Park Gomhui's Pension Wealth Class" (14th) all sustained long runs on the list.

New investment titles also proliferated. The number of new releases in the category grew from 296 in the first half of last year to 467 in the first half of this year, with new titles on domestic stocks more than doubling — from 21 to 53 over the same period. "Investment book sales jumped 277.8 percent year-on-year, reflecting a rapid surge in demand," a Yes24 official said.