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I understand that the fact that books have been, and mostly still are, physically distributed, has meant that the rights are often a patchwork across the globe. What I don't understand is why the publishers don't appear to want to make money all the same. It is not beyond the wit of man to credit a different copyright holder with their share of the spoils based on where an ebook was sold. It reminds me a bit of the rail network in the UK, which is split into lots of different companies that operate different services and stations. Despite this, the customer just sees a process of buying a ticket from A to B with agreed pricing. The division of the proceeds happens behind the scenes.
The only reasons that I can see that the publishers wouldn't have got together with retailers - or Amazon at least - to sort this out, are: (1) too small a market to bother, or (2) they don't want ebooks to succeed.
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