The Thai publishing market is expected to decline this year as economic woes hit people's pockets, but booksellers see a promising opportunity by targeting niche markets, according to the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand (Pubat).
Nattakorn Vuttichaipornkul, vice-president of internal affairs at Pubat, said booksellers and publishers experienced a slight drop in sales in the first half of the year.
"The reduced consumer purchasing power due to the country's stagnant economy is the reason for the declining sales as people postpone buying new books," Mr Nattakorn said.
Theerapat Charoensuk, Pubat's executive committee, said there had also been a slight drop in new book titles compared with the corresponding period last year.
Around 4,500 new titles were published and acquired an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) in the first half of 2024, down by 10% from around 5,000 new titles in the corresponding period last year, according to the National Library of Thailand.
The data collected during national book fairs in 2023 and 2024 showed that comic books and light novels led the market in terms of sales, followed by novels and literature, and how-to books, he said.
"The sales of textbooks dropped as people turned to watching and learning from video platforms like YouTube," Mr Theerapat said.
He said Pubat expects "boys' love" or yaoi novels will continue to grow this year.
As a result of the increasing popularity of yaoi novels over the past five years, Pubat has started to see a growing demand for girls' love novels, he said.
At present, yaoi novels account for more than 10% of overall books sales, he added.
To date, the association has 485 members, which consist of publishers and booksellers, up from 288 members during the pandemic, Mr Theerapat said.
"Following the pandemic, the association has seen a rising trend of small publishers targeting particular niches such as crime fiction, Chinese historical novels, boys' love and girls' love fiction, and finance and investment books, with higher prices," Mr Theerapat said.
Furthermore, the association also saw a proliferation of the book subscription model in which readers pay tokens to the reading app platform to unlock the chapters they want to read.
On the creators' side, some novel writers are opting to feature their work on the online platform first and then publish in printed form.
Mr Theerapat said the total market value of the Thai publishing industry in 2023 was 17 million baht and the association expects the market value to decline slightly or remain flat this year.
Mr Theerapat said there had been a slight drop in new book titles compared with the corresponding period last year.