The rights fair’s list – Singapore, Turkey, Vietnam, China, US, UK, Japan, South Korea – reflects a market that has moved beyond regional.
The Bangkok International Book Fair is still live until 6 April, but its 2-day B2B counterpart, the Bangkok Rights Fair, wrapped on 28 March having quietly become one of the most significant dates in the SE Asian publishing calendar.
In only its third year, BKKRF brought together 163 companies and writers from 24 countries and territories for more than 300 business matching sessions, with projected copyright transactions exceeding 90 million baht ($2.65 million).
That projection is pitched against a real baseline: last year’s edition concluded 271 rights-matching meetings involving 135 companies and generated 68 million baht in completed deals, with participants drawn from South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Myanmar and Philippines.
The 2026 target represents a 32% step-up, and given the trajectory – from 80 companies across 14 countries at the inaugural 2024 edition to this year’s numbers – the ambition appears grounded.
PUBAT, in partnership with Thailand’s Dept. International Trade Promotion, is explicit about the strategic intent: Bangkok as the central hub of the SE Asian book market, with BKKRF as the mechanism for realising that ambition.
What makes this year’s rights fair particularly telling is what it reveals about the content driving that commercial energy.
Embedded within the broader fair – whose demographic is 69% aged 12-35, with comics and manga commanding 40% of total sales – the rights fair programme included a “Y Book Journey” exhibition tracing Thailand’s Boys’ Love and Girls’ Love novel tradition from domestic origins to what organisers frame explicitly as a global soft power story.
This is Thai government-backed infrastructure actively marketing content that remains legally contested across much of the region it is exporting to.
The geography here matters for anyone tracking rights flows. The Philippines, where broadcaster ABS-CBN has already struck direct deals with Thai production company GMMTV, is an active and receptive market. Vietnam and Cambodia have reportedly moved from consumption to producing their own BL and GL content.
Indonesia, by contrast, presents publishing’s most striking contradiction: home to one of Southeast Asia’s largest streaming audiences across Netflix, Viu, WeTV and iQIYI, with Thai BL series achieving No. 1 trending status domestically, yet operating a domestic publishing and broadcast environment in which such content faces significant constraint.
Laos, poorly served by English-language publishing data, functions largely as a Thai content conduit by proximity. Myanmar has moved in the opposite direction – its military government banned seven books on LGBTQ themes last year.
The rights fair’s list – Singapore, Turkey, Vietnam, China, US, UK, Japan, South Korea – reflects a market that has moved beyond regional. Full deal data once PUBAT releases post-event figures in the next two weeks.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
