Chinese Novels

So, I've been pre-ordering all the titles through Yiggybean as they come out - I'm in the US, so don't have some of the same international/cross-border issues, but otherwise your experience basically matches mine. All in all I think this is a damn good write-up and I would agree with it, so when below I only talk about the parts where I differ a little, it's not meant as anything negative about the post as a whole, I just think all the rest is A+. :D

My Nanchan also got caught up in the customs snafu, and while I also wish they had e-mailed as well as updating the webpage, well... it was what it was. You mentioned wondering if a GO might have been better, and for that... I ALSO once had a GO I was in get involved a customs snafu. With Yiggybean, they communicated at least somewhat, and were able to negotiate to get the books sent back to Singapore and then returned to the US, resulting in me ultimately getting my book without any increase in price. When the same thing happened to a merch order I did in a GO, the group order person was NOT able to negotiate to get their stuff removed from impound, it was deep-sixed permanently, and the GO runner could only issue apologies and partial refunds out of their own pocket (I declined mine; it wasn't worth taking $10 from this person who was surely already dealing with a ton of people who were way more pissed than I was). Now, this doesn't mean "Yiggybean had the pull and the GO didn't" because we don't know the full circumstances - why were each orders impounded, what were the other factors and other impacted orders, etc. - but at least from my extremely limited experience, I'd definitely favor Yiggybean over a GO if customs issues are a major concern. (they're not a huge concern from me; like. I ordered from that GO after the issue, I figured things like this are bound to happen ordering through the hurdles we face in North America getting things from China. It's annoying but some amount of it is probably inevitable. Not that I think you disagree with that, to be clear, just explaining my own attitude.)

Re: back blurbs, I've seen this discussed many other places but this is a disconnect in how books are marketed different places. No back blurb is standard practice in a lot of Asian countries. My understanding is that Rosmei was really taken by surprise by how different the culture in NA is in that regard, and I think I heard they're adding back blurbs to at least some of their upcoming titles?

Re: volume counts for the Rosmei titles, they're all here (this is a blog post I wrote and that I update as new licenses are announced): https://duckprintspress.com/2024/03/26/danmei-and-baihe-c-novels-and-manhua-officially-licensed-in-english/#rosmei-flag

Anyway yeah, great post, thanks for sharing it, and hope my little additional babbling here is helpful.