True. I've experienced that first hand already. But, this trend makes me wonder what is the value of book publishers nowadays.

Publishers to me meant (1) brand, i.e. some signal of quality (2) distribution, i.e. reach wider audience and marketing machine. Now if book publishers are asking the writers to bring their audience, then their two main values are less valuable. In other words, book publishers are commoditizing themselves by themselves, and I kinda convinced that my next book will be a self publish one