It doesn't. On the one hand you say that "book publishers work very hard at building the highest reputation possible by being as selective as possible so they can be as prestigious as possible, such that when something is published with their name on it, that carries weight. Gravitas, if you will."
On the other hand, you say that HarperCollins exercises no selectivity at all and publishes what you believe to be junk like the "History of Evolutionary Dogmatism" (couldn't you name a real book to make your point?).
Seems to me that book publishers (and authors) are principally in business to sell books, which explains rather well the existence of books like "Of Pandas and People" and "Darwin's Black Box", not to mention Jack Chick.
First, the book title was supposed to be a little funny, for Pete's sake. Breathe, everyone, it's the weekend.
Second, I said no such thing, re: HarperCollins. It's not that they don't exercise selectivity, but rather they are selecting for a different literary phenotype, if you will. They -- or let's say fiction booksellers in general -- are trying to publish entertaining books that make a really good read.
Yes, everyone wants to promote their own survival, but that doesn't mean they're all trying to occupy they same literary environmental niche. Each bookseller has selected a certain niche and tries to adapt itself as perfectly as possible for that niche.
In the case of academic and scientific booksellers, their fitness function is highly correlated to the intellectual integrity of their authors. For fictional booksellers, there's a different definition of fitness. This making any sense yet? It's not that complicated really, and everyone here knows it's true.
Are you really trying to argue that McGraw-Hill or Wiley or MIT Press are going to start publishing Howard Stern's autobiography just because it would make them lots of money? If that's the position you want to stake out for yourself, go ahead, and we'll all have a good long laugh at your expense.
Speaking of books, does anyone know anything about the late Barbara Stahl's text, "Vertebrate History: problems in evolution"? I was thinking of giving it a read, but if one of you evos who moonlight as specialists in claiming published books are full of errors could provide some insight, that would be great.