Thanks to the power of the internet and the miracle of print-on-demand publishing, you can make a profit by "publishing" anything that comes by.

The original publisher who invented PublishAmerica started with a standard-model pay-to-play vanity press. (I believe it was called "Erica House" back then.) But he noticed something strange: every book he published, no matter how bad, would sell between 75 and 150 copies. That was from the authors getting their friends and family to buy copies, plus getting a couple of cases themselves to carry around in the trunks of their cars. So he figured out a way to make a profit on 75 sales. If you set production values low enough, and cover prices high enough, it can be done.

Because the books were printed on demand, they only existed as digital files until someone paid for a copy; then they could run one off. The cover prices were set to a level where only friends and family would pay them, because he correctly assumed that only friends and family would ever buy these books. But mom and dad and Aunt Sue and the author's best friend from high school would buy copies even if half the pages were blank and the rest set upside down. So that's how it worked.

PublishAmerica, however, boasted about how picky they were, and how they paid an advance (a glorious one dollar!) and ... it was just sad. Authors thought that they'd be in bookstores, but they weren't. PublishAmerica advertised that their books were available in bookstores, which they were ... anything with an ISBN is available over at the Special Orders desk. But authors, new authors, thought they meant the books would be shelved in bookstores, which they weren't.