The ecosystem is there, and getting better all the time.
Reasonable recommendations for ancillary publishing services can be found on any of the popular writer's forums like absolute write or the author's cafe on kboards. Several relevant subreddits also exist.
Like everything, there are scammers and people looking to make a quick buck for shoddy work, but there are also a LOT of frustrated former English and Art majors who have hung out a shingle.
As far as editing goes, you can pay for pretty much anything the publishing houses provided, from a proofreading to copyediting, even a developmental edit (recommendations on story structure, what works, what doesn't work, etc.).
In my experience, book design and editing are easily handled by most authors with even an iota of motivation. It's the marketing that baffles most people. Congratulations, you wrote a book, now what? etc.
Yup, there is no UI to do it manually, but you can email the people at KDP and they will link the book for you. I've waited for it to happened automatically in the past, and it hasn't worked out for me.
Once linked, you can also do cool things like offer the ebook at a discount (or for free) if they buy the print version.
Having both versions on the same page really makes the whole thing look more 'professional'.
Erotica is VERY different. It may look saturated, but well written short stories with attractive covers and good blurbs can still sell incredibly well.
And, with the advent of Kindle Unlimited (if Amazon's payments hold at the current level per borrow) sales plus borrows is proving to be even more lucrative than sales alone.
You have just described the poster boy for self publishing.
As long as he prices his books over $2.99, Amazon will give him 70% of the price, so if he sells 30,000 books at $4.99 (approximately what novel length fiction sells for if it's not from a major publisher) he would make about 100k.
Let me just say, I think there are very few authors who can expect sales anywhere near those numbers. NYTimes bestsellers do a fraction of that.
Still, a busy author can easily write 2 to 3 books a year, more if the are organized, determined, and disciplined. Some authors that I know of are putting out a novel a month.
So, he can make a living. And he is MUCH better off without an old fashioned publisher.
As far as services needed, there is a burgeoning industry of freelance editors, cover designers, book designers, etc., that will provide everything a traditional publisher used to provide. OK, yes, except for a marketing budget, but talk to mid-list authors and see what publishers provided to them for marketing. HINT: nada.
How do I know? Without giving away all my secrets, I'm making way more money than I ever thought possible publishing fiction on Amazon KDP. I'm about to jump into non-fiction, which I'm guessing could be even bigger...
There is a new experimental build of inkscape for osx which is slightly less awkward. Search for 'inkscape osx menu', it has been stable for me and you don't need to install an x server.
Reasonable recommendations for ancillary publishing services can be found on any of the popular writer's forums like absolute write or the author's cafe on kboards. Several relevant subreddits also exist.
Like everything, there are scammers and people looking to make a quick buck for shoddy work, but there are also a LOT of frustrated former English and Art majors who have hung out a shingle.
As far as editing goes, you can pay for pretty much anything the publishing houses provided, from a proofreading to copyediting, even a developmental edit (recommendations on story structure, what works, what doesn't work, etc.).
In my experience, book design and editing are easily handled by most authors with even an iota of motivation. It's the marketing that baffles most people. Congratulations, you wrote a book, now what? etc.