Last year I published a book with Oxford University Press called The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Oxford gave me a small advance, but thanks to that advance I was able to turn down some speaking engagements in order to focus on writing, which I enjoy much more than speaking. When I turned in the manuscript it went to some highly professional copy editors who caught many errors that I had missed. Designers came up with an attractive and appropriate cover, and gave the text a clean and elegant look. Marketing people got the book into the hands of reviewers, and arranged for me to give some talks and radio interviews.
Back in the '60s and '70s, I earned a good part of what I liked to call my living as a freelance book editor. By the end of the '70s the market had largely dried up, I think because dropping freelancers was the first wave of cost-cutting. I suspect that a freelance copyediting service might do pretty well these days. (Interestingly, I can still read a book and keep in my mind's eye various parts of it. So if I see something that repeats something said earlier or that contradicts something said earlier, I can usually pretty quickly go back and find the earlier passage. Very useful skill for a reviewer.)
By the way, as Lee notes, the comments on this post are very interesting.
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