Since researching the availability of my books as ebooks back at the end of January, I've been able to mostly answer all of my questions. Some with reader's help, others by emailing my publisher and then enjoying a very interesting chat on the phone with the person who deals with ebook issues. That said, what I write below is in my own words.

So, what were my questions again?

Can customers in Australia buy eBook version of my books from Amazon.com, iBookstore and Kobo?

Thanks to the lovely commenters, Tim and Nicole, I know now that if you're an Australian customer, only the ebooks available in this region will show when you browse Amazon. Nicole even went as far as buying a book – thanks Nicole! I'm a little doubtful that this is true of the Amazon UK site, though, as it is showing the UK editions of books and they shouldn't be available to Australian customers.

Why aren't Australian online stores stocking the ebooks of my books?

Why isn't the full set of Age of the Five available on Amazon.com, when it is on at least one other US-accessible ebook site?

Now this is a stickier question, and the answer is complicated. The first thing I should make clear is that there are a lot of differences between a self-publisher putting ebooks online and a publishing company putting them online. The self-publisher format (Amazon and Smashwords) works rather like ebay. The publishing company format (Amazon, iBookshop, Kobo, book retailer websites) works a bit more like the traditional bricks and mortar style bookshop arrangement with all the complexity of pricing, promotional agreements, etc. Obviously my books are not self-published, so latter situation is what we're dealing with here.

The obstacles a publisher faces in getting an ebook online have mostly to do with the technology being very new and there being multiple ebook formats. Some of the issues are complicated, so I've kept this post small by listing the main ones without getting bogged down in variations:

* New books are easier and less time consuming to convert because they don't have to be dug up from an archive and converted from old program formats, like backlist titles do.

* With the enormous number of books to convert, getting an entire backlist of books out as ebooks can't be done overnight. A lot is being done to speed the process but, well, as always when you hurry something errors will probably be missed.

* Data must be compiled for each ebook, and if there is just one error the ebook can 'fall off the system'. Some errors are hard to spot (like, say, whether a date is presented with the month or day first).

* Different ebook formats require data supplied in different ways so a book has to be tweaked for each.

* There's no clear feedback system for when an ebook fails to work. They don't necessarily appear on the bookseller sites straight away and even when they do they can mysteriously disappear later.

Converting books to ebook formats, compiling and checking the data, spotting mistakes and fixing them all takes time. And time is money. I've read articles that say producing an eBook can actually cost more than producing a paper book, and now that I know what's involved I'm inclined to believe it.

This is a new industry, but it is a growing one. I've heard that ebook retailers are advertising for hundreds of jobs at a time – huge opportunities there – and that typesetters, who adapted so well to the shift to digital production, are expanding to become 'digital typesetters' so they can take advantage of the extra work in converting books to ebook formats.

While there are inefficiencies in the system now, things will improve. After all, authors, publishers and booksellers are all in the business of selling books, so we're all working hard to make them available. For my part, knowing how snowed under publishers are, I figure I can help out by keeping an eye on bookseller sites and letting them know if something has fallen off the system.

And for Australian customers, I've decided to keep a list of what's available. I'll update it when I have time and repost it on this blog. Let me know if you have any trouble buying an ebook listed as available at any of the sites below.

Key: BMT = Black Magician Trilogy, AotF = Age of the Five trilogy, TMA = The Magician's Apprentice, TST = Traitor Spy Trilogy

Amazon – BMT, second book of AofF, TMA, first book of TST

Amazon UK – all books available (a bit odd as the UK editions of the BMT and AotF shouldn't be showing up for Australian customers)

iBookstore – Second book of AotF, TMA, first book of TST

Kobo – BMT and first two books of AoTF available

Angus&Robertson – BMT and first two books of AotF available

Borders – BMT and first two books of AotF available

Dymocks – No books available

ebooks.com – No books available (what you can see is the US edition, which is a bit weird as they're an Australian bookseller so ought to be selling the local edition)

As you may have spotted, the ebooks that appear to have fallen off the system are the first and last of the Age of the Five trilogy. I suspect that those books aren't available to US customers either, but it looks like UK customers ought to have no problem getting any of my titles.

(A big thank you to the reader who got me researching this in the first place, Michael, who not only drew my attention to some missing titles, but also contacted one of my publishers to let them know.)