One factor is publishing rights. Traditionally, English language publishers negotiated for two main sets of rights: American (sometimes North American) rights, and British and Commonwealth rights. The latter resulted in the same books (with English spelling conventions) appearing in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc.<p>There have been attempts to change this. To quote from a Guardian article from 2008:<p>"We are all struggling to free ourselves from the proprietorial attitudes of the US and UK that continue to dominate the publishing world," said Juliet Rogers, chief of one of Australia's largest independent publishers Murdoch Books, and former president of the Australian Publishers Association. "The UK fails to grasp that the Empire is dead and that Commonwealth markets are no longer theirs by right [and] the US views Canadian rights as an automatic extension of their territory, even though they frequently have no intention of responsibly exercising those rights."<p>"Because British or American publishers get first dibs and insist on British Commonwealth rights, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are not getting a look in," added Andrew Wilkins, director of Australian publisher Wilkins Farago. This is to the disadvantage of authors, he explained, as exported copies of books are sold at reduced royalty rates, "so in theory the author could be making three to four times more money by having a local publisher – it makes no sense."<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/17/canada-australia-commonwealth-frankfurt-publishers" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/17/canada-australi...</a>