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It's called editing for the market, I guess. One notoriously extreme example is an Agatha Christie novel, can't remember the title off the top of my head, where the US edition left out most of Poirot's French, shortened the book drastically, and changed the murderer! (AND the title!) I have seen books where the location was changed to a different country; where a book set in England had, weirdly, the currency in dollars. Where characters names were changed. When Edgar Wallace's 1920s novels were reprinted in paperback in the early 60s, the currency was updated. Fifty quid was a lot of money in 1928; peanuts in 1963. The editors simply added a 0.
Every edition is likely to be slightly different from the other.
Last but not least, there is the typist/keyboard wonk who may, unconsciously, omit a sub-paragraph or two as they peck away.
I'd hate to have to do a variorum edition of any mass-selling novel which ran into many prints, reprints and editions.
Then there's the syndicated serial edition: often cut drastically. The serial edition of "Peyton Place" was about half the length of the book. Anything that might disturb Mum and Dad on the sofa watching "Leave it to Beaver" was carefully excised.
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