I think self publishing and publishing via an editor serve 2 different purposes.
In my case, I always self published. My objective was simply to get my writing out there and have it as a "business card" with all the freedom. Publishing with editors is a different can of worms : more constraints, more process.. and to me removes part of the pleasure and the "amateur" aspect of it and a LOT of freedom. But is surely more professional though.
New book about leading digital transformations. It removes the buzz and hype stuff and go into how to actually make the right models work by leveraging digital platforms.
I think there is theory and there is real life.
As tech worker, in 20 years career, in private sector, I have always been on forfait jours, working more than 10h/day on average, during many years weekend included. I never got paid extra hours. So I get what you say about the perception and the law. The French law is protective (i.e if I can prove that in a court I'll get my extra hours paid for sure but my career would end. Period.
This is not true. Government workers or factory workers can limit to 35h (with some salary loss or days off loss), but else than that (especially in tech) it is very competitive and working 50 hours+/week is not exceptionl.
I created this course about Data Integration around 2 years back following delivering some complex integrations
https://www.udemy.com/course/data-integration-guide/?couponC...
(Link with coupon code)
It brings around 300€/month, and is very much appreciated by professionals despite it not being very conventional. The reason to put it was to share some lessons learned in such projects
I also published a book on Amazon (with some more detailed content) and it sells handful (sometimes more) copies every month.
For the source of the Search, it is shown in ChatGPT Search, so you can check it / get the link.
On the index part, there is certainly some indexing, but it is on a small subset as I understand it (only "partners").