I was delighted when my book showed up on Z-library! I of course was never paid for authoring that book; indeed I paid a subvention to publish it with Harvard University Press. At some point, the rights were sold to the giant publisher Brill, which was charging $30 per chapter for a book that has no value by chapter. Luckily, some kind soul at University of Marburg uploaded it and Library Genesis still has it. https:…
If you didn't get paid for writing the book, how did the copyright transfer to someone else (so that they could sell it)? Or the transferable rights to print/distribute it, if that's what we're talking about here.
I signed away rights to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the legal name in this context for Harvard). That was not a problem as it was clear to me that this would not be a money-maker for anyone. The business-side was handled by Eisenbrauns, a small publisher. When the owner retired, the business sold to Penn State. Later, the Harvard Semitic Museum (the part of Harvard in charge of the series) sold the rights to Brill. I am guessing that Harvard Semitic Museum saw this as a chance to get a little bit of money out of their asset, and Brill saw this as a cow to milk to death, the way the price for legacy software is raised to sky-high levels as the product dies. And indeed, I am guessing that Brill is not making much -- no one did. https://www.sspnet.org/community/news/brill-announces-collab...