When Was It Released?

Do books get released in Israel before they are released in America? That question jumped out at me as I was exploring the world of Israeli seforim stores during my current visit to Israel. When I was in Manny's in Meah Shearim the other day I happened to see what would be considered a new, big, release considering it's predecessor's great success. The book? It was the new Feldheim English translation of Nefesh Shimshon. I believe that the topic of the new release is Emunah but since I have yet to find it online I am just relying on memory. As some of you may recall, the first Nefesh Shimshon translation was on Shabbos Kodesh and it jumped to the top of Feldheim's best seller list. Feldheim even had an advertisement for a while that if you bought the book and didn't enjoy it you could return it for a refund. That was how sure they were that it would go over well with the readers, and the consensus seems to be that they were right. So why was I surprised to see it in the Israeli seforim stores? The main reason is that such a big follow up release could be assumed to garner a lot of ad time on Feldheim's website and in the various Jewish publications. However, the book has not even made it into the Feldheim "future release" section as of yet, implying that it still has a while before it is released, and needless to say there has been no news announcing the publication of this volume. Since the new Nefesh Shimshon has been released in Israel the release dates must be in regards to other countries, including America. There are other books that I know of that were also released first in Israel before the rest of the world, again highlighting the variation in release dates that a book may have. In the meantime I am curious to see when the first advertisements will take place in America for Nefesh Shimshon on Emunah (?) as well as to see the reception it gets. R' Shimshon Pincus's works in general are as good as gold and can be found on bookshelves in homes all over the world so this new addition can probably be assured to be another bestseller. We'll see soon.

On a side note, another observation I made while making my way through Yerushalayim book stores is that book release dates can work in the reverse as well. So far I have yet to see the new Artscroll release, The Family Lesson A Day, which is their new edition to the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation publications and can currently be found in American book stores. So maybe the way these things work is that all the book publishers get together and decide that to be fair some books get released first in Israel while the rest of us get to have the other new releases. If I could have some input in all of this I would recommend that everybody use the "Harry Potter release method" which is that all new books are held under lock and key until they are released simultaneously around the world. Then again, for that to work, bookstores would have to stay open until the wee hours of the morning and trampling could ensue, so maybe we should just keep things the way they are.