These are part and parcel of the same problem. Publishers want to strip creators of ownership as soon as possible because their back catalog is a pile of gold and they are the dragon using it as a makeshift bed. At their scale creative works are more valuable for the status they confer upon the company than for being an actual thing that they can sell.
All of this is deliberate, of course. The copyright bargain we currently have today was struck in the 1970s - a time in which much creative work was a collaborative effort that practically had to be capitalistically owned by a for-profit corporation. Self-publishing was entirely a product of counter-culture, fan conventions[0], and vanity presses[1]. The only fig leaf to the notion of these being authors rights rather than just a weird kind of tradeable monopoly is rights reversion - a thing which publishers hate with the passion of God.
[0] Yes, those actually did exist at this time. Remember: San Diego Comic-Con started in 1970 and Comiket in 1975. If you think that's old wait until I tell you about the historical Sherlock Holmes fandom!
[1] I suspect this was a derisive term coined by large book publishers as a reaction to people who aided self-publishing artists.
All of this is deliberate, of course. The copyright bargain we currently have today was struck in the 1970s - a time in which much creative work was a collaborative effort that practically had to be capitalistically owned by a for-profit corporation. Self-publishing was entirely a product of counter-culture, fan conventions[0], and vanity presses[1]. The only fig leaf to the notion of these being authors rights rather than just a weird kind of tradeable monopoly is rights reversion - a thing which publishers hate with the passion of God.
[0] Yes, those actually did exist at this time. Remember: San Diego Comic-Con started in 1970 and Comiket in 1975. If you think that's old wait until I tell you about the historical Sherlock Holmes fandom!
[1] I suspect this was a derisive term coined by large book publishers as a reaction to people who aided self-publishing artists.