Penguin Random House to Open ASEAN Office

PRH is a publishing giant, with regional offices in all 6 inhabitable continents. Asia is served by Penguin India and Penguin North Asia (my publisher) with a remit to cover China, Japan and South Korea …

Its always been a surprise that South East Asia, home to over 600 million people and large English reading market has been often overlooked. According to Publishing Perspectives, this will change in 2019 with the opening of a new PRH ASEAN regional office in Singapore to discover and publish local and international voices across English-language adult and childrens fiction and nonfiction formats for Singapore and Malaysia, as well as from Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, andMyanmar

The inclusion of Myanmar on that list (at the expense of Cambodia and Laos?) is a welcome nod of recognition from the publishing industry to the wealth of opportunities to be found and read in this country.  Given that their catalogue will be in English, and the lack of literary agents in this region, it will be interesting to see how they will source new works from Myanmar