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Actually, I'm not assuming that the majority of slushpile books are good... merely that more than .000001% of them are good, and that the present system isn't rescuing enough of them for consumers.
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Steve, you seem to be a very cruel guy. You yourself admit that 1 in 100 million books (okay "more than") might be worth rescuing. Let's even say it's 1 in 100.000. For this one book you would let pitiful readers worldwide wade through 99.999 books of somewhat "editorially enhanced" material?! My, I'd call Amnesty International if I ever came across such poor souls ...
You get the idea? Publishers don't want to wade through all of this stuff. That's why they reject on thousands with even looking at it. How long do you think it would take review sites to be sick of all this material? One year? One month? More likely one week ...
Okay, but back to your main idea, the service itself. It is already offered, of course mostly for printed books, but you hardly find any publisher with some self-esteem who would offer that kind of service himself. Even in a subcompany.
Any respected publisher would risk his own good reputation ever being connected to that sort of vanity press. By fellow publishers, by authors, by bookstores, by the readers themselves.
Did you ever consider such a service for yourself? In Germany, you'd get a
service from BoD (Google-translated, folks) for 849.- to 2000.- Euros and above. And I know of vanity press cases where wannabe authors had to pay
up to 8.000 Euros (that's about 12.000 US$ ...).
You might get it for about 1000.- Euros, if you're lucky and have some connections (know it, been there). Editorial service, cover illustration, typography, graphic design. Basic stuff, but indeed well done for that price.
Still quite a lot of money for your average Joe the plumber. Without ever knowing if he/she might ever sell enough copies (digital or printed) of the title to ever generate enough revenues.
So, who's the one to let the authors sort the wheat from the chaff of such a service? Or warn them in advance if their stuff really isn't worth it?
The "third party" again? That's a lot to ask from the community, being an unbiased, unprejudiced and conversant advisor. And that for free? This third party itself would offer a service to readers and authors which would be a business model in itself ...