Yoon Cheol-ho, President of the Korea Publishers Association, "Will Introduce Book Sales Information Sharing System"

Yoon Cheol-ho, President of the Korea Publishing Culture Association. (Photo by Korea Publishing Culture Association)

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dong-hyun] The Korea Publishing Culture Association announced on the 30th that it will create a book sales information system that authors and publishers can use together. It also promised to actively participate in improving the standard publishing contract.

Yoon Cheol-ho, president of the Publishing Association, made these remarks at a press conference held in the afternoon at the association auditorium in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Referring to recent issues such as the missing royalties from author Jang Kang-myeong's publisher, Yoon said, "Problems such as delayed royalty payments and contract violations are frequently revealed," emphasizing, "This is extremely harmful to the trust between authors and publishers and, furthermore, to the development of the publishing industry."

Yoon pointed out, "In the past, book sales information was centered around royalty payment contract periods of 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year," adding, "However, from the author's perspective, this is indeed lacking in terms of promptness and transparency." He continued, "Transparency aside, in a situation where real-time information exchange via the internet and social networking services (SNS) is commonplace, delayed sales reports on a 6-month or 1-year basis do not align with the everyday sensibilities of our era that demand swift information," adding, "As a result, the situation inevitably feels even more opaque."

To address these issues, Yoon introduced a system developed to share sales information online with authors at their desired time and place. He explained, "If authors and publishers agree to share sales information in real time, authors will be able to check their sales volume at the respective bookstores through the 'Author-Publisher Book Sales Information Sharing System' installed on the Publishing Association's website," adding, "If the sales of the bookstores mentioned here are combined, it would account for about 70% of the sales of single-volume books, so the major trends in book sales can be immediately confirmed."

Yoon added, "So far, the system has been developed, and from July 1, pilot participants will be recruited, with plans to increase participating publishers in earnest from August."

Yoon also spoke about the standard publishing contract. He said, "Last Thursday, the Publishing Copyright Law Advancement Promotion Committee was held, and there were criticisms such as 'slave contracts' regarding some parts of the standard publishing contract announced in January," adding, "The central issue was the contract period being 10 years and automatic renewal under the same conditions if there is no objection. We decided to remove this clause."

Regarding secondary copyright use, Yoon emphasized, "There were many criticisms that publishers should not be unconditionally entrusted with this," and added, "It was decided that it is desirable to improve the wording so that secondary copyright delegation can proceed only after authors and publishers mutually confirm clear business agreement intentions."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.