Who’s going to incur the cost of promoting a new book or author in New Zealand, for instance, if the sale goes to a different company in the US – you need a way to connect the sale to the promoter who bears the cost of that sale (often, but not necessarily) the same publisher who is promoting the p-book edition at considerable expense).

Territorial restrictions don’t stop consumers buying ebooks, they just allow local channels to develop that support local publishing and allow local marketing to exist. And since it’s under the control of the publisher/author, it doesn’t remove any options from them, it opens them up. If a publisher wants to sell their titles without any territorial restrictions, they can (and do).

how, exactly, do you rationalise this as a good thing ?

where in New Zealand, would you go to download an eBook ? do they have a local distributor in that country ? do they have a distributor in Australia, Asia, Europe,, etc, that would also not have territorial restrictions, and sell the book to that customer ?

why is this a good thing ? it certainly makes piracy a better alternative, since a retail outlet refusing to sell a product, makes more sense, than an e-retail outlet refusing to send a file because it doesn’t want to sell the product to a customer.

i can understand regional protection for local markets, Australia / NZ has a tiny retail market which would instantly be flooded by almost any import/export of AUS/US/EU printed retail books, but what about the instance where there is no competing market, when the local distributor has no eBook version, has no plans to operate in the eBook market, and yet, local publishers and local distributors have no ability to modify that geographic embargo for consumers, when they won’t be competing in that market.

what, precisely, makes this ‘probably right ‘ ?