What is going on is a "perfect storm" of out-dated practices converging to dump on consumers:
1- Until recently, publishers were also printers and they could only profitably sell books where they were printed. Shipping costs made it unprofitable to print in one country and ship at another at the same price.
2- Nation-state governments have long seen their (dominant) national culture as a glue that holds the state together so they have seen fit to restrain imports of "cultural products" that might undercut local products and/or prop up the local providers through subsidies or restriction of competition.
3- As a result of the above: until recently, most national markets were isolated pockets free of external competitive pressures. Even if a book was available cheaper elsewhere the shipping cost, time delay, and import duties all were calibrated to protect the local sources, many of whom found a nice and tidy business in licensing external content for local production and sale. (Just as Apple charges a 30% tax for access to their locked-in customer base, the regional publishers charge content providers for access to the lock-in citizenry in their region.)
4- Over time, the system that evolved made good money for the middlemen, less money for the creators, and royally shafted the consumers in the smaller market. But there wasn't a viable alternative. Everybody was in the same boat.
Fast forward to the 21st century.
Global shipping now allows reasonably fast and cheap movement of goods.
Global communications allows fast and reliable online sale of said goods.
New digital goods technologies allow for massless content distribution over the open communications networks.
Suddenly, the various regional markets are no longer isolated.
Price comparisons are possible.
Consumer-level cross-continental shopping is routine.
And planet-wide marketting is not only viable but highly profitable.
Yet the old structures remain because the regional players (more often than not) still act as if they have a god-given right to exploit the customer base in their territories and, where print books are concerned, they really don't have the right to sell outside their territory. What started out as a necessity became an enforceable "gentlemen's agreement" not to "poach" on each other's territory and is now a deathgrip on fading monopolies.
In these early days of ebooks, too many regional publishers see themselves solely as importers and distributors of content and fail to see the greater profits to be made by exporting local content worldwide. They would rather protect the remnants of their 19th century monopolies than try to exploit the wide-open global market.
What the publishers are doing is hanging on to an outdated business model because they fear the new global market of the 21st.
It is unwise of them.
It is a losing game. It hurts their existing customers, it hurts the authors whose content they are pledged to promote and distribute, and it guarantees their own demise.
They can drag things out, especially in regions with protectionist nationalist regimes, and annoy and hurt their customers for a while longer, but eventually the nature of the technology will assert itself.
Over time, content producers will see there is more money to be made with unfettered global language rights contracts than with regional cotracts. Over time, global retail channels will be established (Amazon is already there and vilified for it but they are not going away. Kobo is building a federated counter through regional partnerships. Other players will emerge.).
Over time the existing regional contracts and the copyrights they enforce will expire and most if not all content will be licensed appropriately for a global marketplace.
Over time pricing will be rationalized, availability will be synchronized, and revenues will be maximized.
Customers all over will still be exploited, of course, but they won't be made to feel like afterthoughts and they'll all be exploited equally.
Nirvana it won't be.
But it won't be Gehenna either.
But its still a long ways off.