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Originally Posted by koland
Even with big names these days, it's obvious that publishers no longer do much, if any, editing and no proofing before hitting the print key at the presses.
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You may not like what's coming out of modern publishers, but they do provide editing and proofing services. They may not be as good as they used to, but they provide more than nothing. (And for some fields, notably nonfiction, they provide extensive editing, proofing & formatting.)
I suspect you haven't seen what's floating around as free PDF downloads on Lulu.
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Authors are expected to present a formatted, ready to print manuscript in electronic format to their publisher, just as with Amazon (or Mobipocket or Smashwords, etc).
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No, they're not. They're expected to provide formatted (bold, italic, indented; styles are generally optional) Word docs in almost all cases, usually on letter-sized/A4 pages, with 1" or 1.25" margins, sometimes double-spaced. They generally want 12 pt Times or Arial, which is easy to read on a screen & allows for easy methods of reformatting for print.
They're certainly not expected to provide 4.5x7" pages with single-spaced body text in 10-pt Georgia, with chapter starts having a 2" top margin, and chapter titles in a script font. Nor are they expected to provide three different formats: one for hardcover, one for trade, one for mass-market paperback. The publisher handles the difference between those editions.