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It's the booksellers in a country, or online, who charge the price, rather than the publishers. They ask publishers to negotiate a price that appeals to them and then they mark it up to the price they feel their market can take. We sell to bookshops in Cambodia as we have a novel set there, and negotiate a rate that cuts our income down to 17p per book so that they can have the mark-up in the shop they want. The cost of delivery of a book does make it hard to sell books overseas and this is why ebooks are a great way of allowing publishers to take on authors in other countries. We struggle to get a decent price in shops in other countries otherwise, so we do have to turn authors down. However, if Amazon give only 35% in those countries for ebook sales they will stop publishers from taking on the authors. I would still take them on but I don't know how many publishing companies would. It's easy to think it's the publisher who sets prices, but it's the bookseller. They won't take books from publishers unless we give them a price they like.
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