[unclewaltr]

I think the crux of your argument is that you don't feel the employees in the publishing industry should be paid for their time and experience. In your article, you described being very upset when getting critical feedback from them about your manuscript. Even though it was coming from a very experienced source. It sounds like you just didn't want to work with experts on the project. But in the comment above, you went further and said 10 Speed took "virtually no risk" beyond their time. You realize that people get paid, I'm sure. Owning a restaurant, I'm sure you're aware the overhead is more than just the raw materials of the food. And that if you give the same raw materials to a random chef at a random location, you will have varying degrees of success.

It sounds like you're going in completely ignorant to an industry and, because you're very talented in another area, take a simplistic approach and assume anyone benefiting from your (most likely) amazing documentation of your culinary skills is taking money from the only one producing something here. I know it's not your intention, and I think it's more and more common these days.