Publishing in ... South Korea

       It's a similar story in many places, but this report, from what had seemed to be a fairly bookish place, is pretty troubling: as Kim Tong-hyung reports in The Korea Times, apparently For the local book market, it's apocalypse now, as:

A report from Statistics Korea Monday showed that book consumption -- measured by the sales of hardcovers, paperbacks and magazines -- hit a new low last year with the average spending of households sinking below 20,000 won (about $18.44).

       All sorts of terrible numbers here, such as:

New books released by publishers decreased by a staggering 20 percent in 2012. The online purchases of books pulled back for the first time since the statistics agency started keeping track of electronic commerce activity in 2001.

       Yes, even e-book sales are already in decline there !
       And:

According to separate data from the Korean Publishers Association (KPA), publishers introduced 39,767 new books last year and printed and published 86.97 million copies. It was the first time since 2000 that less than 100 million copies of new books were published over a full year.

       And:

The number of bookstores was counted at 5,683 in 1994, but reduced to 2,247 in 2003 and 1,752 in 2011

       Not great trends here .....