Many people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video and music. Some people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video games. There has been remarkably little discussion about the issue when it comes to digital books, though, at least in part because of how little it's in your face.
Take, for example, the fantasy novel by David Eddings, Pawn of Prophecy, which starts off his series The Belgariad. Normally, if you go to Amazon.com from the US, you see no indication that an e-book version is even available. However, if you happen to come from a foreign IP... this is what you see instead:
 | Hey, look! A Kindle version! ... What happens if I click on it? |
 | That looks like what I want! Time to buy! Sign in, and.... |
 | Huh? |
 | Meanwhile, on Amazon.jp.... |
 | Or Amazon.co.uk.... |
 | ...Or Amazon.de.... |
From what I can tell, this comes down to the idiotic policies of Random House, who own the copyrights in the US. They don't seem to have recognized that e-books are a great way to sell books from your back catalog, even for ones that have a fairly large following. What's even more ridiculous is that the international arm of the same publisher (Transworld Publishers) has already released electronics versions of the books!
Left hand, meet right hand. sigh
In the meantime, I'll go buy these from overseas. At least the Kindle is able to keep books from multiple accounts on a single Kindle simultaneously (unlike the mobile phone versions of the apps)....