Path: news.ccsf.jp!norn-news!news.heimat.gr.jp!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!news.motzarella.org!motzarella.org!not-for-mail From: CL Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan,soc.culture.japan Subject: Re: Foreign book wholesaler Yohan bankrupt Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:40:33 +0900 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: reader.motzarella.org U2FsdGVkX19EFppDJ969lILi1Axi+z553ywCToz6tMshTF0DysH+pXNTqp1l3APWUBzJCXkyWRFI9CbivzjA51MFTr/iAdApXUPatCk6WtAYvokHM/43a9G1XV0kNhL9Gy9eFTBOd0s= X-Complaints-To: Please send complaints to abuse@motzarella.org with full headers NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 02:41:11 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: X-Antivirus-Status: Clean X-Auth-Sender: U2FsdGVkX1+tnGZQIrekIbq40LrTD0k0 X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 080808-0, 2008-08-08), Outbound message Cancel-Lock: sha1:qOCA1zqIXkpJUY3uVQyqixYS7O0= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666 Xref: news.ccsf.jp fj.life.in-japan:167434 Jim Breen wrote: > As Debito's blog makes clear, it's not altogether a bad thing, and has > a fair amount of "getting just desserts" attached to it. Well, it _is_ Debito and it is doubtful he lives in the same Japan as the rest of us anyway. There was nothing new in his blog for anyone who has actually studied how Japan works and not gotten all of their information on the country from watching "Itsumo San-chome no Yuhi." > 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. 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. -- CL