anyone advertized in Publishers Weekly? (not PW select)

Publisher's Weekly is highly invested in the traditional publishing world, which is indeed a separate reality from the indie world. Those ads are mainly used by traditional publishing companies that can afford that kind of money and who don't even blink. I'm not sure how receptive their readers are to self-published works, since they're used to seeing house names and award stickers, etc. You would get a lot of exposure, sure, but whether that would convert to enough sales to recoup your losses, I really don't know.

You definitely wouldn't want to get one if all you have is an ebook on amazon.com. You would need paper and ebook and to be wide on all major platforms. Having audio would also be smart.

Trad publishers have to charge such high prices cos they have so many employees they have to pay, plus the editors/publishing board's salaries, etc. And when paper book prices started dropping the folks at the top certainly weren't going to be the ones who took the paycut. So author advances dropped a bunch for first timers and midlisters. The number of manuscripts they accepted went way down. And lots of editors got the chop, so there are now fewer eyes, more typos, and insane prices.