She was famously flat broke, I doubt she could have borrowed money or done any of the other things to get traction. What she got from her publisher was marketin

She was famously flat broke, I doubt she could have borrowed money or done any of the other things to get traction. What she got from her publisher was marketing, contacts, distribution of review copies ... (it certainly wasn't editing). Big famous authors are not going to go with Amazon, they can self publish (c.f. Zappa, Radiohead). Smaller authors are not going to get effort put into them and are better off buying lottery tickets than relying on Amazon for career development. The people do who do the work Amazon won't do? Publishers.