(Photo: SBS)

Korean bookstores have a new section to add to their aisles – K-drama scripts.

Script books of Korean TV series and films are seeing a surge in sales, the Korea JoongAng Daily reports.

According to online book retailer Yes24, 58 K-drama scripts were published as books between January and July this year, a noticeable increase from 14 during the same period in 2020 and 48 in 2021.

Sales are also on the rise, with 93.2 percent growth in 2020, 54.5 percent in 2021 and 121 percent in 2022 compared to the previous years.

Currently, the best-sellers are parts 1 and 2 of the SBS series ‘Our Beloved Summer’ (pictured), which ended in January. The scripts were published as books in February and have sold a combined total of more than 90,000.

Script books sell for around 20,000 won (US$15) per copy, and one show is often broken down into two or more parts.

Publishing company senior editor Kim Min-kyung said the driving force behind the popularity of script books was fandom culture among viewers in their teens and 20s.

The CEO of a book company, Kim Jung-min, said: “Korea is the only country where scripts for television series are published as books. They’re leading the growth of Korean book sales in Japan, Southeast Asia and Russia.”