(This article first appeared in Real Estate Investor's Monthly.)

Ayah Kaya Tidak Kaya

I have recently received emails from people in Indonesia complimenting me on my book that they bought there. I offer no books outside the U.S. Inquiries revealed that someone there translated my Internet book review of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad into Indonesian and is selling it there without my permission. My wife was actually born in Indonesia to expatriate American parents working for a U.S. oil company.

I got an Indonesian to send me a copy. Nice looking book. The cover graphics are more professional than my books. The publisher is BACA! (The ! is part of their company name.) The gibberish above is the book title, which I guess is some twist of the Rich Dad Poor Dad title.

The bottom of the cover says “John T. Reed, Harvard Business School, Konglomerat dan penulis 20 buku investasi real estate.” I have an MBA from Harvard Business School, but juxtaposing my name with the school like that implies that I am an employee of HBS. Never was. (I did reject a job offer from the admissions department when I graduated. If I had it to do over, I would have accepted that offer, but cannot imagine I would have stayed more than a year.)

The other line sounds like a combination of pidgin English and Indonesian. I suspect it says I am the author of more than 20 books on real estate investment. That is approximately correct.

If there was any doubt that the WorldWide Web deserved that name, this sort of thing eliminates it. As a result of my strictly English Web site, I have lately been interviewed by Korean TV, Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper, and some French newspaper. I sell no books or subscriptions outside the U.S., so I see no benefit from this. Although I do wonder if I made the Indonesian best seller list. JTR