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The reason for that, Caz, is that a treebook's legal point of sale is where it is bought and dispatched from, so if you order, say, a paperback in the USA, you're buying the authorised version locally. An ebook's point of sale, though, is the actual location of the device onto which it is downloaded so the holder of US rights may be different from the holder of rights in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc, etc.
The only way around this will be for agents and publishers get around a table and discuss some kind of international rights deal (possibly shared) so that print sales are still maximised by individual publishers who know their local markets but ebook rights are internationally shared and available to online buyers anywhere.
It wouldn't be easy, of course, because cover and even content can differ according to each edition produced to local reader taste and an international ebook edition would have to take this into account. It's a sticky problem and there's no easy answer.
Fortunately for my own wee house, we saw something like this coming as soon as online book selling became big and major ebook stores began to open. We have not signed in our eleven-year history a single contract that does not allow us full international rights to print and digital. Now seeing the results, our authors all agree that this was a wise policy.
Bestests. Neil
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