[fjtorres]

What these publishers are grumbling about is the impact the disparate tax policies have on the mainstreaming/maturation of the ebook markets in their country. Not the fact that they are being taxed.

Ebooks are a very high margin product compared to print books so, on a purely business/economic basis you would expect publishers to want to maximize those sales. Most arguments against going all-in on ebooks come from non-economic issues like channel conflict or perceived value-add to their suppliers.

A secondary issue for publishers in non-English speaking countries is that they not only compete with local publishers but also with the Global English ebook catalog at Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, and Google. Especially the cheap titles from Indie publishers which put them at a double disadvantage: not only are there few ebook readers in their countries (which makes ebooks less profitable than they could be, given the abundance of smartphones and tablets) they also have to compete with much cheaper titles from abroad.

As the realization spreads that ebooks are not at all a fad the need to tap into that potential market becomes increasingly important. And it will inevitably force publishers to deal with the channel conflict side. That is unavoidable.

A classic story from the 1990's tech industry:
In the early 90's, Bill Gates wanted to promote the use of CD-ROM as a content distribution mechanism ($0.25 CDs being cheaper and more reliable than 7-10 floppies) so he needed an incentive to get people to buy CD-ROM drives for their PCs. One incentive was the MS BOOKSHELF reference bundle. Another was the MPC spec for gaming, edutainment, and interactive ebooks on CD. But what he really needed was a multimedia encyclopedia to highlight the added value of MPC.
So Mr Gates went to Britannica, hat in hand, begging for a non-exclusive, highly restrictive license to their text for a CD-ROM edition at Microsoft expense under the Britannica brand.
No deal.
The upfront money was tempting. The high royalties less so because they didn't expect many to sell. The hangup was channel conflict: the bulk of Britannica sales were through door-to-door salesmen and they were afraid to annoy them just for a few thousand techie sales.

Off to World Book went Gates.
Same story.

Grolier, ditto. (Plus they had a text-only deal with Digital Research that wasn't making much money. Doubly disinterested.)

Down the list he went until he finally found an encyclopedia publisher willing to deal: Funk & Wagnalls, the "pulp publisher" of the business. Not a name to put on a $400 product so he bought a no strings copy of the text and put together an in-house team to build him a quality encyclopedia. Turned out there was no shortage of available exitors and researchers because the print encyclopedia companies had been "streamlining" operations.

In 2003, MS ENCARTA was born. It sold modestly as expected but it made for great demos at PC stores. Then EGGHEAD approached MS with an offer to do a launch promo for Encarta at $129. Just to raise awareness. MS agreed to a fixed number of units.
They sold out within days.
The deal was extended.
$129 became the regular street price.
Then the PC vendors came asking about a bundle deal.
Soon Encarta was everywhere.
A billion dollar a year business that lasted a decade.

The smaller encyclopedia vendors vanished practically overnight; some sold their texts to MS and they ended up enhancing Encarta. Britannica and World Book made deals with IBM and Netscape that were far less favorable than the sweet deal MS had offered. They were barely also-rans.

And the oh-so important door-to-door channel? Poof.
Encarta was everywhere, from Egghead to Walmart.

Technology disruptions aren't pretty but they are more often than not irresistible.
You either join up or suffer.

Betting the farm on the old ways often leads to losing the farm.