Amazon has the beginnings of this in place with Createspace. My father just published a book through them and received rudimentary copy editing and page layout

Amazon has the beginnings of this in place with Createspace. My father just published a book through them and received rudimentary copy editing and page layout assistance from Createspace for this. For serious scholarly editing you must hire an outsider, however. My father used an outside editor and an independent person to create the index. The end result for my father's book is aesthetically acceptable (not amazing). The fact that this could happen is an indication that the publishing industry is ripe for (cue HN's favorite word, thrown around with wild and frankly immature abandon) disruption. The book is a biography of Frank Miller, who built the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. (Think of a hotel version of the Hearst Castle, built by someone who had less money than William Randolph Hearst.) The number of people who are interested in the book is limited -- Frank Miller is a a semi-obscure historical figure of the American West, interesting to a few scholars and a few people in the glorious Inland Empire of California. That said, I think my father has several hundred in hard copy sales already.