Gen Z Is Packing Thailand's Book Expo and Hunting the Secondhand Stalls

By Andy — 2026-07-15 — used books Thailand

I watched a nineteen-year-old girl flip through a cracked-spine horror novel at the secondhand stalls during Book Expo Thailand 2025. She was laughing at something, talking to her friend, and not even checking the price tag until the very end.

That's the story, more or less.

The 30th Book Expo drew 1.5 million people across October 9-19 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre, and Gen Z—PUBAT's definition of ages 12 to 28—made up around 70% of them. That's up 20% from the year before. If you're wondering whether young people in Thailand are glued to screens and physical books are quietly dying somewhere in the background, you can stop wondering now. Total sales hit 474 million baht, an 8.2% increase on last year's 438 million baht. This isn't a niche genre holding its own. This is a market turning a corner.

The expo ran 900 booths across 400 publishers and split the floor into seven zones, including one dedicated to secondhand books. Not relegated to some dark corner. Not understaffed. The secondhand section drew some of the heaviest foot traffic on the whole floor because younger buyers are hunting for an affordable way into book collecting, and because publishers were offering discounts up to 80%. But here's the thing that matters more than the discount: a worn paperback carries weight that a shrink-wrapped copy off a display table never will. The book has a history. Someone else read it first.

Dead obvious, when you say it like that.

Horror, detective fiction, and manga topped the purchase lists according to PUBAT's post-event data. There's a reason. A Thai thriller series drops on a regional streaming platform, search interest in the novel spikes, and readers who don't want to pay full price head straight for the secondhand pile. Actually, that's not quite right—they don't just drift toward it, they already know where it is before they arrive. The used-book seller captures demand faster than anyone in the traditional retail chain because the supply is already moving.

The market projections are worth taking seriously. PUBAT forecasts the Thai publishing industry will hit 20 billion baht by end of 2026, up from 18 billion baht in 2025. The pre-pandemic peak was 30 billion baht, so we're still rebuilding. But the 5-10% annual growth forecast isn't built on nostalgia. It's built on cross-media tie-ins, streaming adaptations, and a generation of readers who treat genre fiction as part of the same entertainment diet as podcasts and serialized drama. Horror novels bleeding into anime series into TikTok conversations into a secondhand purchase. The categories blur. The boundaries don't hold anymore.

A dedicated Used Book Market Fair is scheduled for February 7-8, 2026 at Wat Rajabopit in Bangkok, featuring over 30 stalls with rare finds and first editions. Platforms like Booklo and the BKK Book District have been building infrastructure around this exact demand for a while now. These aren't fringe operations.

There's another angle worth holding onto, something to do with tactility and choice. Gen Z grew up entirely inside the digital content economy, which means a physical book carries a novelty that older readers don't attach to the same way. A secondhand paperback is the anti-algorithm purchase. You chose it. It has history. No recommendation engine nudged you toward it. The aesthetic has genuine pull with a demographic exhausted by infinite scroll, by the weight of constant curation.

The Nation Thailand reported on those record sales figures, and The New Publishing Standard has tracked PUBAT's revised forecasts closely. What both sets of numbers point toward is a used-book market in Thailand that's no longer a discount afterthought. It's where the real energy lives.

If you're sourcing, selling, or thinking about getting into secondhand books in Bangkok, the 70% figure is the one to hold onto. That's who's showing up. And they're not browsing casually. They're buying because the book they want exists on a secondhand shelf, already broken in, already loved by someone else.

Tags: PUBAT, used books Thailand, Book Expo Thailand, Gen Z book buying Thailand, Thailand book market 2026, secondhand books Bangkok