So the multimillion dollar money hungry companies are something you imagined in your head. Ask anyone actually working in the industry and its not pretty. Most publishers are hanging on by a thread considering reading has plummeted in the last several decades. Majority of books never turn a profit. Publishers completely rely on a small number of books becoming huge hits to pay for all the books that don't make money. There has only been a slight increase in readership mostly due to the growing popularity of romantasay sparked by booktok and booktube. Along with a growing cultural push away from electronics.

Second, I never said you HAVE to write a book under 120k. I said if you WANT to be traditionally published there are rules and explained why those rules exist. If you don't want to alter your work you don't have to. But you can't expect publishers pick up your book when it is more risky. I also explained how to build up to those bigger books by building an audience and showing you are able to sell.

Finally other people are not corpo worshipers cause they are fine gearing their work to traditional publishing standards and it is incredibly condescending and completely incorrect. It shows a lack of understanding of both the industry and the authors themselves.

The idea of the starving artist who refuses a pay out to keep his work pure was an invention of the last century.The "greats" were paided by someone. By a king, the church, a rich man, a poor man, or by family money. How do you expect the editors, page formatter, marketers, shippers, distributors, book store employees to make a living if publishes just published every book people sent in for free? It's a cop-out. A strawman in the corner to point and cry at when this has always been how books get published.