Even American universities engage in this money-making from off-copyright books.
I found a rare German book from 1918 on Google Books--"copyright under evaluation". The book was offered as reprint by the University of Michigan for $9.99. When it came, it was clearly stated on the cover that "The contents of this book was digitized by Google Books". Thus, there is a clear connection between Michigan University, Google, and the reprint sale...
Another name on the cover was HathiTrust,
www.hathitrust.org