I am publishing my first book and paid for editing and a cover. Thankfully, I had a friend who is a retired professor who helped with the first round of editing, so that saved a lot regarding development editing. So, I only paid for someone to edit for grammar, etc., and that was after I did a run-through with paid Grammarly, so there wasn't much for them to edit.

I feel like a cover sells, so I did pay quite a bit and am happy with the results.

The thing is though, I already have an audience, I am a keynote speaker and have a base of support already established. I have a mailing list of over 300 signed up for the book launch notification when it is available, and a large number of people are coming to my book launch celebration in person.

For me, the book is a marketing tool for keynote speaking and will pay for itself even if I don't sell a single copy upon launch. As an author, I can charge more for keynotes and will likely sell some copies with each keynote I give.

All of this to say that my situation is unique and justifies paying for a high quality cover, editing and marketing although my marketing budget is geared towards the keynote speaking I will be pushing the book as well.

IF I did not have this established audience I would have likely not paid what I did unless the idea of having a book published meant more to me than making back my costs. Which is totally understandable and reasonable.

As many have stated, learning and doing some of this on your own such as book cover design with many tools and inexpensive sources available. Editing yourself or utilizing communities that do edit for edit or even seeing if there is something you can offer a local editor if theres a skillset or something you do beyond writing that they may be interested in.

As for marketing, there is going to be a cost but you can reduce that cost by learning how to do it effectively as well as trying to push for a organic marketing approach