It is not well known, but publishers do not have automatic rights to the copyright once a book goes into a second printing. An author has to formally request the rights at that point, but since most of us are unaware of that right, we rarely do.

On Mar 26, 2019, at 12:43 PM, Herman Tull via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

And there are other ways we "pay" without knowing it at all...all "free" publishers (as far as my experience goes) require that we, as authors, assign copyright to them. This means we actually lose our right to distribute them, to reprint, etc. (whether we hold to this or not). In fact, if not for jstor, I would not have access to any of my old articles, reviews, etc. in electronic form. (And, here, too there are limits, as I believe the copyright transfers to jstor).

Herman Tull