Chosun Bookstore

What if there were bookstores for the people in the Joseon era?
The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, in fact, tells that a man named Eodeukgang made proposals to expand the bookshop overseen by the government, which, of course, were never carried out.
Today, people can buy books on the Internet through various forms of social media without ever coming into contact with them firsthand; but for many people still, reading doesn’t really feel like reading unless they’re holding a paper book in their hands. People clearly spend less time reading books today than they did in the past, as a result of a wider distribution of various cultural contents, but the importance of reading books remains. Although people don’t appreciate books as much as they used to, the value of books will not fade away. When audiobooks came out about fifteen years ago, and e-books came out eight or nine years ago, many predicted that it was the end of paper books. But it is plain today that the emergence of audiobooks and e-books has not changed the general trend in the publishing world, except in a few sectors.
The author states that through his book, he wants to convey the importance of books and bookstores to readers, even though it is fiction. Although Korea is one of the great powers in the world, the country has a relatively low reading rate. If the IT sector is a beautifully made-up face, the publishing sector is a naked face in comparison.
The author indicates that he has done his best to be true to the historical incidents, while the dynamics of the relationships between the characters are fictional. He has also made an effort to write as much about books and bookstores as possible. To create the feeling of “books in a book,” he includes a number of modern-day bestsellers in the story whenever a new character appears, and discusses the preparation and marketing methods that accompany the opening of a bookstore.