Top Book Publishers in Malaysia — And What Each One Is Actually Good For

Publishing a book in Malaysia is not as complicated as most people think. The harder part is finding the right publisher for your specific book — because not every publisher here handles every type of content, and approaching the wrong one wastes everyone's time. This guide covers five of the most established book publishers in Malaysia, what each one specialises in, and which type of author is the right fit for each.

1. AcePremier — The One to Call If You Are Writing a Business or Self-Help Book

We have had authors come to us after spending six, seven, eight months trying to get a response from a traditional publisher. Eight months. For a rejection email that never even arrived. That is the reality of trying to publish a business or self-help book in Malaysia through the conventional route — a lot of waiting, a lot of silence, and eventually a decision to either give up or hand the manuscript to a printer who has absolutely no idea how to get a book into MPH & Popular.

AcePremier was built for exactly that kind of author. Based in Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur, the team has published over 300 titles in the business, investing, self-help, parenting and wellness space. The process covers everything — editing, design, layout, printing, ISBN registration and distribution to MPH, Popular, Kinokuniya and BookXcess. Online too. Shopee, Lazada, Tiktok.

What makes AcePremier genuinely different — and this is not something you will find on most publisher websites — is that they also own and produce BabyTalk and Natural Health magazines. Running live publications with real editorial deadlines changes how a content team thinks. They are not producing books occasionally. They are in the business of making things people actually read, month after month. That discipline shows in how manuscripts get edited and positioned.

They publish in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese. Authors keep full ownership of their manuscript and rights — which is not something every publisher in Malaysia will tell you clearly before you sign anything.

Good for: Business, investing, self-help, wellness, parenting, corporate publications Publishes in: English, Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese Website: acepremier.com

2. Sasbadi Holdings — Four Decades of Getting Malaysian Kids Through Exams

There is a particular smell to a Sasbadi assessment book. If you went to a Malaysian school anytime from the late 1980s onwards, you know exactly what that smell is. These books have been on the desks of Malaysian students for nearly forty years — and Sasbadi has somehow managed to stay genuinely relevant the whole time, which in publishing is harder than it sounds.

Founded in 1985 and publicly listed on Bursa Malaysia, Sasbadi is the kind of educational publisher that parents trust almost automatically. Textbooks, assessment books, revision guides, workbooks — all built tightly around the national school curriculum. Primary, secondary, pre-school, Form Six, MUET. They cover the lot.

But here is the thing about Sasbadi that actually impresses — they did not fight the digital shift. While a lot of traditional publishers were still arguing about whether e-books were a real thing, Sasbadi was quietly building interactive learning platforms, mobile apps, quiz games and STEM tools. For a company that has been printing revision books since before most of their current readers were born, that is not a small move.

If you are a teacher, a curriculum developer or an education researcher with content that belongs in Malaysian classrooms, Sasbadi has the institutional relationships and the distribution reach to make it happen. You are unlikely to find a more credible name to have on the cover of an educational title in this country.

Good for: School textbooks, assessment books, educational content, digital learning Founded: 1985 Website: sasbadiholdings.com

3. Pelangi Publishing Group — Started by Three Teachers, Now Selling Books in 20 Countries

Three former schoolteachers. A small city in Johor. 1979. That is where Pelangi began — not with a grand vision for a publishing empire, but with a very specific and practical problem. Malaysian students were sitting a new examination format and there was almost nothing locally written to help them prepare for it. So these three teachers wrote it themselves.

That origin story is worth knowing because it explains something about Pelangi that is still true today. This was never a corporate publisher chasing commercial trends. It was educators solving a real problem for real students. Forty-something years later that instinct is still the core of what they do — it has just scaled enormously.

And when we say enormously — over 8,000 titles, distribution through more than 2,000 bookshops across all 13 states, subsidiaries in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, China and the United Kingdom. Go to the KLIBF or any major bookfair in Malaysia and Pelangi will have one of the larger booths. Their children's section alone is the kind of thing that makes a parent's wallet nervous.

They were also the first academic publisher in Malaysia to earn ISO 9001:2000 certification back in 2002, and they have since partnered with Dorling Kindersley and Usborne Publishing — names that Malaysian parents who care about book quality will recognise immediately.

For children's books in particular, Pelangi is about as widely distributed as it gets in this country. If that is your space, this is where you start the conversation.

Good for: Children's books, school textbooks, activity books, educational reference Founded: 1979 Reach: Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, China, UK Website: pelangipublishing.com

4. Karangkraf Media Group — The Publishing Giant Most People Outside Malaysia Have Never Heard Of

Karangkraf is enormous. Genuinely enormous. And yet outside of Malaysia, almost nobody in publishing circles talks about it — which is strange when you consider that this is a company with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of ringgit, over 1,500 employees and a 12-acre campus in Shah Alam that operates its own commercial printing subsidiary.

It started, improbably, with a children's magazine published from a small shop lot in Petaling Jaya in 1978. The founder, Dato' Dr Hussamuddin Yaacob, was the son of an Islamic teacher who supplemented the family income selling newspapers and books. That background — education, print, community — shaped everything Karangkraf became. That first magazine sold over 150,000 copies a week. The trajectory from there was basically inevitable.

Today Karangkraf owns Sinar Harian, one of Malaysia's most widely read daily newspapers. It holds the Malaysian Book of Records recognition for publishing the most Bahasa Malaysia magazine titles of any single company. Walk into any bookshop in Malaysia — Popular, MPH, wherever — and you will find Karangkraf titles taking up serious shelf space. Their Alaf 21 imprint became the leading publisher of Malay-language novels in the country by 2018. Karya Bestari handles Islamic and religious titles. Buku Prima covers mass-market popular fiction. Together these three operate as Gabungan Buku Karangkraf — Malaysia's largest Malay-owned book publisher, by their own description, and honestly it is hard to argue with that.

If you are writing in Bahasa Malaysia — fiction, Islamic content, anything aimed at the mass Malay-speaking market — there is simply no publisher with more distribution weight behind it than Karangkraf.

Good for: Malay-language fiction, Islamic and religious titles Founded: 1978 Imprints: Alaf 21, Buku Prima, Karya Bestari Website: karangkraf.com

5. Gempak Starz — The Malaysian Comic Publisher That Somehow Ended Up Selling Two Million Books in Japan

Most articles about book publishers in Malaysia do not mention Gempak Starz. That is a mistake, and a revealing one — it shows how narrowly most people define what publishing is.

Gempak started as Art Square Creation in 1994. They launched their flagship magazine in 1998 with an idea that nobody else had tried in Malaysia — an info-comic format that combined local comic art with news and features about animation, comics and gaming. No media advertising budget. Just the product. It took 18 months to gain traction. And then it completely changed how Malaysian comics worked.

The format became so influential that Karangkraf — the same media giant described above — launched their own info-comic magazine in direct response. You do not get that kind of imitation from a competitor unless you have genuinely moved the market.

In 2015, Japan's Kadokawa group invested in the company and it became Kadokawa Gempak Starz, expanding into animation, games and international distribution. Then their educational comic series X-Venture sold nearly two million copies in Japan. Two million. In Japan. A Malaysian comic series. Sit with that for a moment because it is genuinely remarkable — the Big Bad Wolf sale here gets more local press coverage than that achievement ever did.

Today they publish over 200 product lines — graphic novels, manga-style comics, horror comics, educational series, illustration books and merchandise. They have exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Beijing International Book Fair. They have collaborated with Kinokuniya and MPH on promotions.

For comic artists, illustrators, graphic novelists or anyone creating visual storytelling for younger Malaysian readers, Gempak Starz is the only serious conversation to have.

Good for: Comics, graphic novels, manga-style books, educational comics, young readers Founded: 1994 Now: Kadokawa Gempak Starz Website: gempakstarz.com

So Which Publisher Should You Actually Approach?

Depends entirely on your book. And your language. And honestly, how much hand-holding you need through the process — because that varies enormously between publishers.

Writing about business, investing, health or personal growth in English? You want a publisher who understands that genre, has real bookstore relationships and will not disappear after handing you a box of printed copies. AcePremier is built specifically for that kind of author and they work directly with writers — no agents, no lengthy gatekeeping, no six months of silence.

Creating content for students and schools? Sasbadi and Pelangi have spent decades earning the curriculum connections and institutional credibility that educational content needs to actually get used in classrooms rather than sitting in a warehouse.

Writing fiction or Islamic content in Bahasa Malaysia for a broad audience? Nobody moves more Malay-language titles than Karangkraf. Full stop.

Working in comics, graphic novels or any kind of visual storytelling? Gempak Starz has already proven — in Japan, of all places — that Malaysian creative work can travel internationally when it is published properly.

The Malaysian publishing scene is more sophisticated than it gets credit for. Pick the right partner for your book and the process is far less painful than most first-time authors fear.

Thinking about publishing your book in Malaysia? AcePremier handles the full process — editing, design, printing and distribution to MPH, Popular, Kinokuniya and beyond. They publish in English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese, and authors retain full rights to their work. Visit acepremier.com or call +603-6203 2522.