Then your friend was published by a vanity publisher, which won't be doing anything to promote, edit, shape, or in any other way make the book better or get it to sell. He probably also paid for the privilege.
The idea isn't getting "published." The idea is getting your work to the quality that you can make a living (or at least a little extra money)--i.e., your writing will be good enough for other people to want to buy.
And even if nobody ever buys it, you'll know *you* made it the highest quality it could be before trying to send it out to publishers. Sure, it's a lot of hoops to go through. But anything worth doing is worth doing well, and the hoops are a way of ensuring you're going to find the right publisher for you--the right editor, the right marketing team, the right amount they'll be willing to pay you, and all of that.
How old are you? I had the impression that you're a teenager, so I give this advice from that perspective: don't even worry about getting published at this point in your life. Just write, and write, and write. Workshop it in creative writing classes or writing groups. Get involved in local writing societies and learn about the publishing process as you get into college and start thinking about the professional end of things.
Being a writer and wanting to be published means becoming a professional. That means honing your skills so a publisher will want to "hire" you, the same as any job. It's just a more creative job than most, and you get to work for yourself for the most part. If you don't do that, then the only publishers you'll attract are the scam artists and the self-publishers that serve a much, much different purpose. The only time I'd recommend self/vanity publishing is if you were writing a local history or a family history or something only of a limited interest, for which you'll want only a few to a couple hundred copies, and for which there's no national market.
