Publishing contracts let uninvolved firms permanently profit from another’s original risk

Evidence

They would get 50% of the royalties, I was to be content with the remaining 50%. So matters remain to this day. That company, which had not had the slightest part in the initial publication of the book – and has never raised a finger to promote it, or either of the subsequent ones which fell into their hands – is still reaping, via the paperback editions, the benefit of John Lehmann’s flair and foresight. — David, Elizabeth, Book of Mediterranean Food, 55

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David, Elizabeth, Book of Mediterranean Food, 55
• XREF: connects to: Financiers profiting solely from commissions embody the phantom-like unreality of imperialist capital; Digital contract weightlessness lets firms extract rights that paper terms could not impose — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 152