Microsoft just charges you for math. Historically speaking what they make are contracts with hardware manufacturers and lawsuits over patents on that math. Mai

Microsoft just charges you for math. Historically speaking what they make are contracts with hardware manufacturers and lawsuits over patents on that math. Mainstream publishers lend authors money to write books as advances, edit their writing (don't knock editing until you see the difference a good editor can make to your writing), produce and distribute the resulting work across media and platforms (don't knock book layout until you've tried to do it), promote the books, manage book-keeping on the resulting revenue, and various other tasks that I've forgotten about. Your friend was targeted by a vanity press. Vanity presses don't do any of that. As you saw, they just gouge you to exploit your desire to see your name on a book. So they are not a good model for actual mainstream publishing houses. (None of this has anything to do with my support for the Internet Archive.)