CL wrote:
> Jim Breen wrote:
>>Practices like Yohan's are illegal in Australia. A pity Japan doesn't
>>have real trade-practices/restraint of trade laws.
> 
> Just about all publishing runs that way to one extent or another.  Yohan
> was just more ruthless than most, eventually forcing Tower Records to
> toe their line, too.  

I don't agree that "all publishing runs that way  .....", although
some of it is nastily restrictive. Anyway Yohan was a distributor;
not a publisher, so the usual "we have to look after authors"
arguments simply don't apply.

> Amazon nailed the lid on their coffin in record
> time and the death was justified.
> 
> Legality just depends on which dress it is wearing and who the fashion
> critic is.  Getting a non-top-100 book on the shelves of the average
> bookseller is effing near impossible in *any* major capitalist country
> for any non-mainstream publisher.  And, if the topic is tripe, like most
> of Debito's screeds, then the job is made doubly difficult.

Good trade practices legislation combined with a properly funded
and staff watchdog organization does wonders. It's not fashion;
just a standard component of a well-run community.

Debito aside (and I have been crossing swords with him since
since he was an Aldwinkle), I realise my first-hand book-trade
experience is limited to Oz and the UK, but I haven't encountered
that level of difficulty in getting marginal books on the shelves.

The problem with Yohan going belly-up is that bookshops might
simply stop getting books from gaikoku. It's a marginal business in
Japan at the best of times. While there are heaps of distributors
all over the English-speaking world who could ship into Japan, I
doubt any of them would want to go to the trouble or expense of
setting up a Japanese presence.

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学