I disagree. There are companies like iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Infinity, and others who are legitimate self-publishing companies. They offer all the 'perks' that go with a regular publishing house (see below) except the author pays for these services. The author maintains ownership of his/her work.
You are absolutely flat-out wrong.
These are all vanity presses.
You are misusing
standard terms in publishing.
A commercial publishing company purchases manuscripts from authors, and handles the cost of producing those manuscripts. They provide cover and interior design, typesetting, printing, marketing, distribution, etc. The author is not expected to pay any of these costs. The book is owned by the publisher.
Again, you are just plain wrong. The book is not owned by the publisher unless it is a work-for-hire written to contract in which the author specifically allocates all rights to the publisher.
The reason copyright is called copyright is that the creator licenses a publisher specific rights to copy, distribute and sell the work.
Those rights are limited. They are limited by time and are usually limited by specific venue and by a contractually stipulated set of circumstances, after which the rights revert.
Frankly, I question the value of YADS or Yet Another Display Site for anyone but the person who creates and controls the site.
* Publishers, editors, and agents do not follow display sites looking for books.
* Readers do not follow display sites looking for books to buy.
* Authors are the audience for display sites.
* If any display site served any value to authors, it would be one associated with a publisher—and the conflict of interest and other problems represented by sites like Authonomy are troubling.
* Display sites benefit the owner/site creator because they provide free actual content that can potentially increase the page rank of the site—and hence ad revenue.