The long journey to make my books available to people around the world.
I've always wanted my books to be more accessible for fans all over the world, and the long journey to make that happen is finally over. I'm really happy. It's a very tearful moment for me. You won't know how many challenges I've had.
Since the publication of my first book in South Korea in 2016, it has also been published in various countries, including Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Turkey, Japan, Brazil, China, Philippines, and Russia in their respective languages. 🇰🇷 🇮🇩 🇹🇼 🇻🇳 🇹🇷 🇯🇵 🇧🇷 🇨🇳 🇵🇭 🇷🇺 Although unofficial, I made a small number of books by myself and sold them to small fans in 2014. I also opened crowdfunding on Kickstarter in 2015, and thankfully, 1,800 fans participated, so I was able to make limited edition books and send them to fans around the world.
However, I had one concern – continuous inquiries from overseas fans looking for English versions of the books. At the time, I felt helpless, but I decided to approach the Korean publishing company that had published my books and asked if they could add English translations to the captions in the book's illustrations. Fortunately, they agreed, and this resolved my initial concern. Eventually, in April 2020, revised editions with English translations were released.
However, at the end of 2019, when the decision to release revised editions was made, my second concern began. It was to find a way to sell my books to fans all around the world. Creating an online store was not an easy task, but I managed to resolve it using an e-commerce platform called Shopify. The real challenge was international shipping. Shipping costs from Korea to many countries abroad were prohibitively expensive, and I had no prior experience with international shipping. I worried about whether fans would be willing to pay such high shipping costs. Despite my concerns, I had no alternative. I diligently searched for a trustworthy shipping company, opened an official website in February 2020, and began preparing to sell my books.
Although I had hoped that this would resolve my concerns, a much larger problem arose, affecting not only me but the entire world: the COVID-19 pandemic. I couldn't have imagined that the pandemic's impact would be so severe. In April 2020, I started selling my books with great aspirations, but the pandemic brought global logistics to a standstill. Immediately after opening the website, I received orders from a lot of people around the world. I had packed all the orders and was ready to ship them, but I received notifications from the shipping company stating that they couldn't deliver to most countries. It was a moment of utter frustration after all the hard work. Orders continued to come in, but there was no way to send them. All I could do was apologize to the customers via email. Fortunately, everyone was understanding, but it took nearly a year to finally ship my books to all the customers. I had no idea that selling something to people living in other countries would be so challenging. Over the course of a year, I faced many trials and tribulations and finally overcame the obstacles.
The concerns, however, did not end there. Over time, I continued to receive comments and emails saying, "I want to buy your books, but the shipping costs are too high." I searched for ways to reduce shipping costs but couldn't find a solution. Since I wasn't a large-scale retailer sending out many international shipments, I couldn't negotiate significant discounts. So, I started looking for other alternatives.
There were two potential solutions. The first was to sell my book on Amazon using Amazon KDP – a print-on-demand model. The second was to sell my books on Amazon by producing my books in bulk and stocking them in Amazon FBA. However, I couldn't bring myself to produce the books in bulk and stock them in Amazon FBA, so I chose Amazon KDP and began selling my books in August 2020.
Has my journey reached its conclusion? Selling my books on Amazon and reading customer reviews, I found a new issue – the quality of the books. Print-on-demand is a method where books are produced and sent out as soon as an order comes in, primarily focusing on text-based books, which led to less-than-ideal paper and print quality for illustration-heavy books in terms of cost. Now, the final solution I'm going to attempt is to produce my books, stock them in Amazon FBA, and sell them. And it took a whopping three years. The long journey to make my books accessible to fans worldwide at reasonable prices and shipping fees has finally come to an end.
My books are now available on Amazon, and you can purchase the new English editions. I am extremely pleased to offer you high-quality English editions at an affordable price with reasonable shipping fees than before. Especially in these new editions, 25 additional unreleased illustrations are divided into two books. I hope this is good news for those who wanted my books but couldn't purchase them until now. I am deeply thankful for your ongoing love and support for my work.