[consp]

Pretty reasonable but inaccurate:

You sign a publishing contract with a publisher, you (and your estate so your kids) collect money from that. After the contract ends it's done. Which is reasonable in my opinion. If I die, my kids don't get my monthly payment anyway.

Since other publishers do not have the manuscript, they can take the book and write it over completely to their own publishing house but due to market lag they it's too little, to late. And if you are wondering, digital reproductions usually fall under the same rights as reproductions (e.g. playing Beethoven, you cannot reproduce that specific work while the author has been dead for years).