Writing is also a great way to meet interesting people and expand a personal network. Whenever I meet someone who has an interesting job and/or interests, I almost always suggest that they write at least one book.
Have you got evidence for either of these claims? Are you an author?
1.) Publishers do provide editing, etc. services that authors would otherwise have to pay for out of their own pockets. That may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff. But, between forgoing and advance and paying for services, authors are probably at least a few $K out of pocket if they go their own way. To the degree that things like book tours/promotion/etc. are relevant--they often aren't--that can add to the difference.
2.) For, especially non-fiction, authors for whom books are more about boosting their profile than bringing in money directly, traditional publishers (rightly or wrongly) have considerably more cachet than independent publishing.
3.) This becomes less and less important, but independently published books probably won't be in book stores.
Another thing I find for tech-related books--which is what I do--is that if I do things myself, I control the length whereas publishers generally have a minimum number of pages in mind which may be more than the topic really warrants. And a final point is that, as an individual, I have more flexibility in just giving copies away (especially ebooks) if I did the book mostly for promotional purposes.
It's not some clickbait garbage either. It's been front page HN numerous times.
What should I be doing? I have a paid book as an option. But everyone Google searches "free book", it was so bad I ended up making my own free link for SEO reasons.
Screw copyright and screw this rent-seeking noise. Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Copying e-books incurs no material cost and therefore charging for it is not justifiable.