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This is such a HUGE subject Doug. And the quick answer is you should do whatever works best for you and your book. There are, I think, essentially three options!

Trying to interest an agent who will then approach publishers on your behalf (a must if you want to be pub’d by a big press) which can take a long time unless you’re one of the lucky few whose book hits a sweet spot.

Alternatively, there are independent presses who take submissions direct from authors so no need to get an agent.

Or, as you say, you could hire a pro editor and cover artist and publish yourself.

The main disadvantages of the last option are money and support. You’ll be paying for everything yourself and you also won’t have any help or advice in publicising your book and it is already hard for a traditionally pub’d debut author to get much visibility. However there are authors who have been very successful. One who springs to mind is Adam Croft who spoke at the virtual York Summer Festival this year. If you don’t already know of him, he has a podcast I think on the subject of indie publishing.

What I find really interesting is the number of authors who are starting to use all three channels, picking whichever one is right for their particular book or situation. I hope it’s a quiet revolution that will see authors, who are, apart from the famous few, under-valued by the industry, grab a bit more power for themselves.

For myself, I have been down the agent and big publisher route and it hasn’t worked out so far – although I would certainly consider it again. However I have had some luck with independent presses (hopefully some news on that front in the next few days!) and my experiences with them have been pretty positive. I’d be prepared to publish myself if I already had a big readership or if I had a book that had an easily reachable audience but probably not otherwise. However that is a purely personal thing to do with my reluctance to commit the time to such a project!

Not sure if any of this helps you decide.