And those publishers - not many, but I can think of at least three without trying - who license world rights, and are very happy for Waterstones to keep on selling to any customer anywhere? Has that baby been thrown out with the bath water?

What's the truth behind this? I understand that legally the point of sale of an e-book is where the customer resides (as opposed to physical books which is the retailer's location) so this must be the basis for this imposition of territorial rights by publishers BUT to my knowledge, many English language e-books do NOT have territorial rights restricted to the UK only (I checked last month on Nielsens Online Book Data). It should be easy enough for retailer's systems to identify from the data Nielsens and/or the distributor/wholesaler provide what the geographic restrictions for an e-book are instead of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. At the same time, publishers should ensure that Nielsens and distributors are given accurate information as to what the territorial restrictions for e-books are (based on the contracts in place) as it appears data integrity for e-books is generally poor and many publishers are reluctant to correct this until issues around pricing, royalties and territorial rights are clarified.

Take my book, Deadly Secrets, as an example - no geographic restrictions whatsoever and now, for example, english speakers people living in Spain (where the book is based) cannot buy the e-book from Waterstones, Smiths or Amazon (fortunately they can still buy it from a Spanish e-book retailer - if they can find the site, read Spanish etc.) but its the retailers, the author and the consumer who are suffering!

That's interesting, Bookseller. Do you run 'exclusive investigations' into publishers as well? Are Amazon not booksellers too? Who are you protecting and why? Like we don't know!

In terms of the wording "in order to comply with the legal demands of publishers regarding the territories into which it can sell digital titles" - this is a bit misleading! Other online e-book websites manage to keep track of which countries they can sell certain books to, but Waterstones have obviously decided that is too difficult. I work for a multinational publisher, and I know we are working our hardest to sort out territorial rights & have our e-books available to consumers in our region ASAP. I understand it's frustrating, but the blame cannot be purely on the publisher - there are a few kinks, yes, but if Waterstones wanted to they could monitor where a customer was from and then limit which books they could access.

This is ridiculous. Have just discovered that I can't buy the ebooks that I spent time browsing for and adding to my Shopping Basket at Waterstones. (I am currently in Japan, but live in the UK). Absolute lunacy. I will seek (free) alternative options from manybooks.net. Waterstones and the publishers can contemplate their loss of potential earnings. A great business model for the publishing industry. Send your paying customers away.. FAIL!