What are the best publishing companies?
That depends on what you mean by publisher. Getting a publisher isn’t usually easy and there is a significant delay between acceptance and books appearing on the shelves. It’s probably best to work through a literary agent who will get you the best deal. Getting an agent is also not easy.There are several types of publisher - Traditional publishers who will take your book edit it format it and then print and distribute it. Some may also promote it but increasingly - that’s up to the author. Traditional publishers pay you royalties and may offer an advance if they think your book has earning potential. There are the big 5 - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. There are also many smaller publishers. Royalties per book sold tend to be low.Vanity publishers do much the same but you pay them for all their services. Seldom do people get a return on their investment. Avoid any publisher who asks for a fee.You can also take the independent publishing route by choosing a print-on-demand publisher. CreateSpace and Lulu seem to lead here but there are others. Their big advantages are that there is no big outlay, no need to store books and a short timescale between submission and books being available. Books tend to be expensive and royalties low.You can also become an independent ebook publisher. Amazon clearly leads here with their KDP service. Timescales can be very short (I once wrote and published a book in a single week) Royalties can be much higher - Amazon offer 70% less a delivery charge, typically 10¢, for an ebook priced $2.99 to $9.99. The downside is you must do all the promotion.
If Amazon sells your book, who is the author suppose to use for publishing? Does Amazon have its own publishing company?
Amazon is just the book retailer. Amazon allows many publishers access to their retail webfront. Traditional publishers like “the big 5” (Penguin Random House, Hatchette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster) distribute their books to Amazon, as well as many smaller traditional publishers. If you “self-publish” (which I think is what the original poster is implying), YOU are the publisher.If a self-published author wishes to distribute beyond the Amazon retail webstore, in many cases they’ll find it advantageous to purchase a set of ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers). When purchasing the ISBNs, buyers must specify a “publisher,” and cannot change the name of the publisher. Some self-published authors choose to simply use their real name as the publisher name; others create a name for their “publishing business” (of which the author is the sole employee). Usually, a simple “doing business as” announcement will work to make this completely legal (although I am not a lawyer and this is not intended to be legal advice, and my experience is limited to the USA). For example, self-published author Joanna Penn publishes her books under the name “Curl-Up Press”; self-published author Mark Dawson publishes his under the name “Unputdownable Books.” Amazon provides tools for self-published authors to make their books, both e-book and paperbacks, available on their webstore, and in those tools, a place for the publisher name is provided.Amazon does publish books as well, but that’s separate from the above process. As of December 2018, Amazon has 15 publishing imprints, including AmazonEncore (formerly out-of-print books); AmazonCrossing (books translated into English); Montlake Romance (mostly romance genre); Thomas & Mercer (mystery); 47North (sci-fi and fantasy); Little A (literary fiction); Lake Union (historical and general); several children’s book imprints, a couple of nonfiction imprints, and others. These publishing imprints act like the Big 5 publishers, requiring agent-submitted manuscripts and other traditional-style processes.