Well, we the vanished can take some comfort in Herman Melville's comment to his worried father-in-law:  "...independent of my pocket, it is my earnest desire to write those sort of books which are said to ‘fail’...”

I guess my books are garbage because they are very well-hidden in the depths of the pit.

I'm sure your books aren't garbage, but we were just talking specifically about how must a book disappears if it doesn't immediately get sales. Are you saying yours do disappear right away? That might be worth investigating if so.

I've had some that were pretty invisible. They reappear whenever they get a sale.

Agreed.

The true garbage is well-hidden, and there's plenty of good indie stuff to read.

That said, I've had stuff that didn't sell on day 1 but didn't immediately disappear. I suspect that people with proven track records get a little bit more consideration. (I'm hardly a bestseller, but I'm not cranking out garbage, either.) I also notice that my new ebook submissions seem to just zip right through approval, at least on good days. The last one was up in under two hours.

Aside from the aside that digital publishing is a relatively new consideration in this sort of market analysis, absolutely nothing in this article isn't old news. For a hundred years, and especially in the late 20th century, trad publishers have gambled money on books and often don't win.  Blockbuster books have always subsidised midlist authors. Celebrity tell-all books and memoirs (sporting and political in particular) have always been bafflingly popular. Huge advances have sometimes failed, "sleepers" have sometimes inexplicably been best-sellers. The amounts being paid now are 21st century, but otherwise the business model in regards to curating a publishing list is exactly the same.
Even having to promote yourself as a trad author is nothing new. You had a four-week window of care-factor from the publisher after your book hit the shelves before they moved on to the next title. Savvy authors spent all year grinding through book club meetings, speaking at any sort of event where an author might be welcome ... an old trick was offering book stores that you'd sign their store copies to give them more appeal — sounds cool, but it prevented the stores from returning those copies as "Returns".
The greatest factor in success is still luck. There are so many best sellers that publishers will admit they can't explain the popularity in comparison to a dozen identical titles.
Tradpub was very, very slow in acknowledging the digital revolution, and it did look in danger of extinction. Now it dominates it with sheer money. You can be sure that when a Big Five publisher releases a new blockbuster, it sure as hell doesn't log into the KDP dashboard. Exclusive deals and agreements are reached behind closed doors.
Trad publishing has been adapting fast. It ain't going anywhere soon. Indie publishing on the other hand is drowning in a mire of its own making. The "tsunami of crap" it was accused of 15 years is now very real.

Dare we hope that Gen-Z decides books are “Newtro” enough to be cool?:

The ‘boring phone’: stressed-out gen Z ditch smartphones for dumbphones
Guardian   27 Apr 2024

“…The Boring Phone is part of a new dumbphone boom, built on the suspicion of gen Z towards the data- and attention-harvesting technologies they have grown up with. That suspicion has fuelled reinventions of retro cultural artefacts – a trend known as Newtro – and seen in the revival of vinyl records, cassettes, fanzines, 8-bit video games and old-fashioned mobile phones….”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/27/the-boring-phone-stressed-out-gen-z-ditch-smartphones-for-dumbphones