VOL.96/2026.07

 

The Secret Weapon: How Data Connects Global Publishing

 

2025.12.01

 

LEE’s Literary Agency, founded in 2008 in Taiwan, is a rights agency specializing in cross-border licensing across Asia and beyond. It represents both Asian and international publishers, focusing on building data-driven connections between markets through translation rights and global collaboration. From the very beginning, LEE’s Literary Agency aimed not merely to bring foreign copyrights into Taiwan, but to help publishers across markets recognize and engage with one another. Our very first project was representing an American author and closing 17 deals within 1 year ? including one with a major US publisher. At the time, I had no idea that this experience would one day allow me to witness the shifting map of the Asian publishing landscape.

 

Insights into the global publishing market

 

Through countless cross-border collaborations and negotiations over the past years, I gradually came to understand how language and culture reshape the value of a book. Two particular experiences deepened my reflections on this industry. The first took place at the Taipei International Book Exhibition one year ago. A general manager of a foreign publisher’s Taiwan branch said to me, “In my country, we’re among the top five publishing houses. I’m curious ? once our books are licensed and published in Taiwan, is this ‘top five’ status still the same?” At that moment, I realized that competition in publishing is not only about content or market reach, but about information asymmetry. With transparent data on translation rights, publishers can better understand their real position in the global network. For instance, a publisher that has long worked with only a few familiar partners might discover new potential buyers once it sees where its competitors are selling. Data transparency, in this sense, becomes a tool not only for analysis but for redefining relationships and expanding collaboration.

 

 

The second story comes from a foreign publisher we have worked with for years. In Asia, their licensing performance had always been steady ? so much so that they rarely needed to engage in active promotion. Simply responding to rights offers from different countries was enough to keep them fully occupied. Yet their leadership was not satisfied with maintaining success; they wanted to expand beyond Asia. So, their rights manager asked if we would help them explore the global market. Our work involved identifying potential partners, arranging meetings at international book fairs, interpreting during one-on-one sessions, and handling follow-ups afterward. It was far beyond the usual scope of an agency’s duties, but driven by passion, I agreed. Unexpectedly, that collaboration marked the beginning of our new phase ? cross-border publishing matchmaking.

 

Inside the K-Book Ecosystem and Its Global Expansion

 

Even before establishing LEE’s Literary Agency, I had already connected with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) through the Seoul International Book Fair. Since our first “3-in-1 Picture Book Fair” collaboration with Korean publishers in 2017, followed by a renewed partnership with the Korea Picture Book Publishers Association in 2024, and most recently the K-Book Market in Taipei in 2025, I have once again witnessed how Korea’s publishing strength is supported by long-term vision and solid government backing.

 

 

To be honest, the format of the K-Book Market is not entirely new. In earlier years, Japan often hosted similar “rights business meetings” across Southeast Asia to cultivate new partnerships. Many major book fairs also include copyright matchmaking sessions where local and foreign publishers explore potential collaborations. From my experience, K-Book operates in two main modes: one is the large-scale 100-to-100 session in Seoul, where global buyers meet Korean publishers one-on-one; the other is a smaller overseas tour of about ten to twenty Korean publishers, who visit other countries for intensive meetings. Each has its rhythm, but both share one thing in common ? they never leave opportunities to luck.
If I were to summarize the key difference between K-Book and similar systems elsewhere, it would be proactivity. Let’s go back to the two stories I mentioned earlier. When faced with the first question, my answer at that time was this: “To know your ranking among foreign publishers in Taiwan’s translation market, you would need a database capable of searching by language, category, publisher, author, and ISBN ? data accurate enough to support meaningful analysis. Unfortunately, no such database exists… yet.”
To the second story, we indeed traveled with that publisher to the London Book Fair, BookExpo America, and the Frankfurt Book Fair. We started by researching publishers on Amazon, sorting them by language and category, gathering contact information, arranging meetings, interpreting on-site, and following up afterward. The entire process took over six months ? and all this effort served only one client. For a rights agency, it was highly labor-intensive and economically unsustainable.

 

 

Data-driven global publishing matching

 

You might be wondering now: “Is there really still no better solution?”, “Must every publisher go through this same exhausting process to explore different markets?”, “Does every new category mean starting all over again ? two weeks to a month of research each time?” Well, such a solution does exist. At the K-Book Market in Taipei in July 2025, we used a new search tool that instantly identified all Taiwanese publishers with experience publishing Korean books. From 2020 to 2025, guess how many there were? The answer is 164 publishers.
To put that into perspective: the event itself hosted about eighty Taiwanese participants ? just two weeks after Taiwan was the Guest of Honor at the Seoul Book Fair. We could even further break down the data by language, category, and market share, revealing the publishing strengths of each segment. Now, I can finally answer that old question: “If you tell me which competitors you’d like to compare with, the results will appear within seconds.” Or put differently: “No matter which language or market you want to explore, with just a few clicks you can find your potential buyers.”
Moreover, whether you are a buyer or a seller, the system allows you to generate a fully updated rights catalogue for book fairs ? just under 5 minutes. We define “buyers” as local publishers who have acquired and released translated editions. By cross-analyzing publication dates and genres, we can infer their preferences and tailor precise recommendation lists. For an agency like ours in Taiwan, this means starting from existing translated editions and, through big-data matching, swiftly identifying suitable publishers across the world.
Such a system also enables Korean titles to reach global markets more efficiently ? even beyond the route of “licensed in Taiwan first, then exported elsewhere.” Any translated edition can potentially spark interest in neighboring regions, extending its cultural reach ? as long as you know your target. You may wonder what kind of system can truly handle all this. It was first created simply to address our own matchmaking needs at LEE’s Literary Agency ? but soon we realized this wasn’t just our problem. It was everyone’s. If you’d like to experience it yourself, visit Book Fair Plus. If the K-Book matchmaking platform could one day be integrated with a data system like BFP, it could identify overseas buyers with greater accuracy and significantly increase the success rate of international licensing. To me, it’s more than just a tool ? it’s a way for the world’s publishers to truly see one another.

 

 

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Written by Naoko LEE (CEO of LEE’s Literary Agency)