It makes logical sense to the publisher every time they convince someone to pay for the 'service'.* Though, frankly, if you are advertising an allegedly professional service in which you promised to review manuscripts for publication in exchange for a fee, one would expect them to be able to demonstrate an ability to actually write a coherent sentence or two themselves...
*And unfortunately the economics of this work out in much the same way as spam e-mail. It costs very little to set up a website (I could talk to some friends tomorrow and get it done by the end of the day AND it would be free of grammar mistakes...), call it $10 a year if you don't pay a web designer, and that is pretty much the only set up costs you need for a scam like this. If anyone at all actually sends you a manuscript with a $25 payment you have already made a profit and every subsequent $25 payment is a further profit. Plus, you can follow the PA model and consider offering other 'extras' such as agreeing to staple manuscripts to Stephen King's head so he is forced to read them for the 'reasonable' sum of $200 and basically you can milk it for all it is worth. All of this is profit, once you have paid your annual domain name fees. You don't even have to pay any staff as you don't actually need to really edit the manuscripts and since you are only selling to the author's friends and family you can use POD to avoid any print costs and not have to bother with any publicity.
The only logic is from the scammer's PoV, though. It is illogical from the writer's PoV...
. Since it's been quoted, I'll leave it as-is -- I'll claim I was going for irony. Yeah, that's the ticket.).
