Which shows there is an overseas market for crowd-funded books as well.

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So what does the situation look like overseas, in Europe or an emerging market, for example?

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In practice, however, these arrangements make it possible for an unscrupulous foreign entity to register its offering overseas and then market its bonds to Qualified Institutional Buyers through a U.S. holding company.

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Third, the manufacturers designed products around home-grown technical standards and special features that are not used elsewhere. (Most foreign visitors to Japan grumble upon discovering that their phones are incompatible with the country's wireless networks.) So the Japanese makers can only build phones tailored to the overseas market at a high cost and lower margins, making it an unattractive business to enter.

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That seemed an irresistible sweetener in a country where overseas lenders are limited to about a fifth of the market.

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Another is that the dollar's strength, even when it's weak--as it was after the stock market collapsed in 2000--gives U.S. industry an advantage overseas.

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The Office for National Statistics said this was "largely due" to a decline in the number of foreign students despite an increase in the number of arrivals from China - the UK's largest overseas student market.

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The optimism is based not on an expectation of rapid or large increases in domestic sales, but rather on confidence in the continued strength of overseas market demand for Japanese products.

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An added pain for studios is that comedies, even ones that do relatively well domestically, are hard to market overseas.

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