French publishers do (or did at one point anyway) the same thing. For instance the first section of realm of the elderlings (3 trilogies, so 9 volumes) was published as 19 volumes.
And for some reason a few years later they republished it in only 7, which is just as insane (they literally cut in the middle of the 5th volume).
There was (still is?) a French law that mandates the maximum sales price for soft-cover/paperback books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Law (if you can read it, the French version of that wikipedia article is much more detailed). The intent behind the law being to attempt to keep "culture" accessible to all incomes, notably by preventing resellers from price-gouging books at the expense of the publisher(s).
This has resulted in many larger tomes being split up when translated to French - for example, the first 5 (English/Original) volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire are sold as 15 (translated to French) books in total : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Tr%C3%B4ne_de_fer#Publicati...
I am also very disappointed at how often French publishers seem to decide that they can chop up these stories willy-nilly without it degrading the quality of the art (re-)productions that they are selling us.
No, I was referring to western liberalism that’s why I used the term western liberalism not “neoliberal hegemony of wealthy Western nations.”
> that’s why I used the term western liberalism not “neoliberal hegemony of wealthy Western nations.”
the latter often cloaks itself as the former when asserting itself.
For example, in France (one of the "birthplaces" for, and current bastions of, western liberalism) there is a phrase often used as a blanket push back against almost any criticism of Israel's actions: "Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East!". It's so prevalent that academia has written an entire book around it: https://www.cairn.info/moyen-orient--9791031803364-page-113....
Depending on how often and how recently they have been encountering things like this (given current events) in their daily life, I can understand the other commenter mistaking your position as such.
For my part, I am unsure of exactly what would happen if we lift the oppressors' thumbs (starting with Israel, Hamas, and wealthy "western" neoliberal hegemony, namely, but the list doesn't stop there). I don't think that anyone knows, for that matter, as it's never happened in any historical circumstances that remotely resemble our own. I do think that if you want western liberalism as the concept, and avoid some of its historical failure modes like boom&bust cycles and exacerbated economic inequality paving the way for populist anti-democratic revolts, you need to aim for much higher than its current outcomes in terms of dignity and self-determination for all groups of peoples. To your point, I've read some reports that Rojava has deteriorated, especially post-US-withdrawal, to very much not be either "western liberalism" or a society I would want to live in.