Here's a funny story about digital books:
I've mentioned before that my Japanese has gotten good enough that I've started reading novels in Japanese (simple novels, sure, but still novels). Unfortunately, importing books from Japan is kind of expensive. The cheapest shipping option out there is SAL, which is super slow, usually takes several weeks before it arrives. And even then, for a ~$6 book you can expect to spend ~$4 in shipping. That's almost half the total price, it adds up. And having to wait so long for books to arrive is pretty annoying too.
Naturally it occurred to me that it might be worth investing in an eBook reader. That way I could completely bypass shipping charges and get the books instantly instead of having to wait weeks! Not to mention that the prices of the books themselves tend to be lower priced. It's win-win, right? So I proceeded to spend weeks researching eBook readers trying to find one that would let me buy Japanese books while living in the US.
I couldn't fine one.
Seriously, there doesn't appear to be a single eReader or eBook store that supports that kind of thing. Not only do they require a Japanese billing address (which I obviously don't have), most of them seem to go as far as doing a geo IP lookup when you're purchasing to make sure you're in the right country. You could get around the latter with a proxy (but why should you have too...), but it's a lot harder to do something about the former. There is no legitimate way that I can find for somebody living in the US to buy Japanese books digitally. Apparently somebody wanting to read a book in something besides their native language is such a marginal case that book publishers don't even consider it.
Wasn't the internet supposed to remove boundaries between countries? Not make them stronger...it's ridiculous that something as basic as wanting to legally import a book from another country--something that's entirely possible to do with paper--has become impossible in the digital age.