NOT trying to dunk at all, as I mostly agree with everything said in these threads, but I figured it might be helpful to share an alternate perspective from someone who recently did decide to go the publisher route.
@thoughtrise.bsky.socialin prior era agreements where publishers were coming in pretty early on, you were in the risk and reward together. they were funding it, you were making it, they got well rewarded for successes but ate the risk
now they want very little risk with the *same* reward. there's no value proposition