Blood and sweat

I have discussed multiple times the elation I felt when I completed my PhD. It was a lot of work, but in the end I joke about what it got me: three letters after my name, a piece of paper in a frame which basically says that I was in school for a really long time, and a book (my dissertation). My Dad asked me when I presented him with a copy of my thesis whether anyone would read it or buy it. I told him, honestly, that we write and bind these things and they generally sit on a shelf in a library collecting dust. No one will read it. And certainly no one would buy it - I didn't think they could even be sold. That is, until I got this email from LJR:

"This is really creepy - I was googling my name to see if my new website was showing up yet, and found this.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EOUOFI/104-2407611-6118346?v=glance&n=551440

and

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EQIW9Q/qid=1143229077/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2407611-6118346?s=books&v=glance&n=551440

What do you think? Any idea how our dissertations wound up online for sale at Amazon?"

WHAT?!?! My dissertation is on sale on AMAZON!?!?!

Needless to say, I was a little disturbed. Here is my work, of which I always joke that no one cares, on which I spent a quarter of my life thus far working, on sale, without my knowledge. I called my department and reported this finding, and there are many people looking into it. JS called thedistributorr and they told him that I had signed a release when I gave my dissertation to Hopkins. And apparently, after $100 in sales, I get a 10% royalty. The dissertation is copyrighted to me. I remember signing a whole bunch of papers when I gave in my dissertation, one of which was about creating an electronic copy for the library, but I don't remember signing anything about selling it. It's also possible that I did, I haven't a clue. It was over a year ago, and I was so happy to be done, that I'm not sure I would remember anyway.

A lot of emails have been sent. No one in my department knew about any of this. They wrote to the library. The person they contacted didn't seem to know anything. She's going to contact her boss. And up the chain it goes. The fact that no one seems to know anything yet disturbs me - it all seems kind of shady. Particularly since LJR said that she didn't find the dissertations of any of our other classmates on Amazon. Whether or not I signed over the publication rights, which is still in debate, I would have like to have been informed that my work is publicly for sale. I feel disturbed and violated.