I was at an agent/editor session at Romantic Times and Ethan Ellenberg (agent who reps quite a few romance authors) said that the problem is that print and digital rights are negotiated together and cannot be separated so you can't sell World English digital rights unless you are selling World English print rights. The foreign print rights can be very lucrative for authors. Most foreign rights (rights to territories outside the home market) are sold with translation rights (ie. sale to Spain for English and Spanish rights).
Maybe digital will change this but for now, authors are willing to hold back those foreign rights, even for digital books, in hopes that they can make another sale to a territory outside their home market.
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