The established author advised me that due to the meteoric rise of self published ebooks and the decline in demand for hard copy books, publishers presently are very reluctant to take on new "unproven" authors.
This is not necessarily an accurate reading of the market. You're in Australia, so certain factors might be different, but the English self-publish e-book market is global. And the self-publish e-book market has not had a meteoric rise. There has been a large rise in the number of people
doing self-published e-books, but the majority of them don't
sell very many copies. Self-published books make up a small percentage of the e-book market, which itself makes about 20-25% of the overall book market. So that's a small slice. It can be a very workable slice; it's been a successful one for a small percentage of self-publishing authors, but it is no danger of wiping out the rest of the book market. It's true that hardcover book sales are generally down, and mass market paperback sales are more down -- since a lot of their sales went to the e-book versions of books coming out from publishers, but trade paperback sales are up. And SFFH sales are up, as is YA, which has a large SFFH contingent. YA SFFH has been very successful in Australia.
Publishers utterly depend on finding new authors. New authors get booksellers to take a gamble on orders, and as such can be more effective often than mid-list authors. However, periodically, depending on economic conditions, publishers will belt tighten, meaning that they will cut mid-listers from their list and take on fewer new people, ones they think have the best shot in the market. We are currently in one of those times, so your author friend is not necessarily wrong in that it is harder to get a deal. But that doesn't mean that deals aren't going on.
That being said, getting a publisher (or agent, but you don't seem to use agents as much in Australia,) takes time and work and time. And some authors don't want to wait to get into the market. So they may turn to self-publishing and sticking mostly to e-publishing. If they do that, it's also a lot of work, more work than partnering with the publisher, but also of course more control. Self-publishers face difficulties in getting reviews and pr resources because there's simply too many of them. And self-publishing e-books gets into fewer vendors than publishers doing e-books and print (and are also working on a different bookselling system than publishers.) So even though you get into the market faster, it may take a fair amount of time to get an audience. It also costs more, especially these days with electronic submissions.
If you're going to self-publish, then obviously it is in your best interest to hire a free-lance editor -- who will developmentally edit your work, not "assess" it. Even when you are an author working with a publisher, you might do this. Half my clients when I free-lance edited were authors working with publishers. (They don't get a lot of editing and copy-editing from publishers these days.) However, free-lance editors are a luxury item. If you can't afford them, then relying on volunteer beta readers has proven to be a workable method. The book may not be as strong or it may be sufficient. The big thing you want to catch are inconsistencies -- things you set up in the story and then you contradict yourself accidentally. Likewise, it's great to have a copy-editor -- if you can afford it. If those fees are going to create hardship for you (because you are unlikely to earn them back,) then you probably are going to want to wait to invest in those services until you have sufficient funds. The reality is that while readers may notice a lot of typos, they're not going to check your grammar (because there is no proper grammar in fiction, on purpose,) and they may be perfectly happy with what you've cooked up. They aren't English teachers (well, most of them aren't.) So while those services can be helpful, even valuable, expediency wins out. As a business person, you have to decide what your business can afford as initial investments and what it can't.
), but in Tracker's case, I was talking about his Kirkus reviews, which aren't cheap but are valid.
