A + B) Do you have money, or are you good at getting investors to give you money for ideas? If yes, you will find that people will want to work for you, and that you will no problem hiring existing teams.

If you have no money and are no prodigy salesman, you will most probably struggle with both. Depends if you already have made a name for yourself in game development... if you are a nobody, you will struggle finding professionals wanting to work for you (after all, will you be able to pay them salaries at the end of the month?), and the hobbyists and newcomers might shy away from working with you as you seem to be the "idea guy" (no matter how much value you or I think that a good project manager can bring to a project, for many you are not doing any tangible work).

C) Well, if you hate game development this much, it might not be for you.

Did you try coding? You didn't like it? At all? Then you might want to leave coding to someone else.

Do you have any talent for art? Being a good artist can make you very valuable for a coder that is looking for help on art.

Don't think that "paying for learning" will get you much farther than just learning yourself. Other than having a stronger incentive to stay on the topic (after all, you paid for it), it will not teach you much more than the internet and free tutorials will.

"paying for talent" is a good strategy, if you have lots of money. Do you have a well paying job? Well, if you have money to burn, you can invest that money into your game. Just make sure you understand the risks (you most probably will loose most or all of that money)... treat it as a very expensive lottery ticket, and you might get close to the risk involved.

Trying to move into the publishing business NOW seems to be just as risky as trying to finance your own game. Publishers are basically getting shortcutted from both sides, with the platform holders not that eager to take on publishing responsibilities while giving devs all the incentive to selfpublish, while more and more are devs tired of working with publishers and are rather taking on the risks themselves, instead trying to minimize the cost.

Again, without money and a good name, you will find it difficult to make it in the business.

About "developing my own ideas" - Its what we all want... yet few, outside of the smallest Indie devs that have only a few people working on a game, or the biggest of big shots that head studios with money to burn can just freely develop their own ideas. Most others are working within very narrow constraints...

If you want to develop your own ideas above anything else, and you are not heading epic, or valve, or any other big studio with money to burn yet, you will need to go the Indie route. That means, unless you at least have money to burn, you need to bring some relevant skills to the table, else you will get nowhere.

Last bit of advice: "Odds of success..." - Odds of success in game development are always rather small. Most games fail, some will never be finished, some will fail in the market. That isn't the end of the world, if you PLAN ACCORDINGLY... hence why you should treat all money invested into games as money you just lost. In about 9 out of 10 cases, that is mostly true. So never invest ALL money into a SINGLE idea.

This holds true for the selfpublishing dev as well as a publisher! You are expected to take on the risk, you will pay for the failure. Your development studio will most probably be paid per milestone, so unless they mess up, you will have to pay them (which they most probably will only in a way that you still have to pay them, as they honored the wording of the contract).

If the game is not making a RoI, that is now your problem, not the developers.

disclaimer: I'm not in the industry, just a hobbyist, so I'm probably not the best source of information.

My strengths as it stands... business related necessities (company filing, head hunting, etc.)

Removed all your development related abilities to focus on this, since this appears to be the reason you're thinking about getting into publishing.

Being able to do these won't make you a good publisher. Publishing is all about getting the product "out there", making people aware of it and wanting to buy it. It means advertising online, putting out ads on TV (or in games that rely on ads if you don't have national TV ad time money), etc.

Recommended formal experience going in?

Advertising and promotion experience would be what I expect most people are going to look at. This is probably the most important work for a publisher.
You're also going to want a formal-looking business: an office, employees to handle phones and emails, etc. I can be fairly safe expecting a team of developers working out of a garage to make a game, I have no such safety in expecting a publisher working out of his garage to sell it.

What are some of the difficulties facing a games publisher (besides money)?

Does this mean you have a reasonable amount of capital, or are expecting to be able to raise it easily? If so, option A or B might be more worthwhile than functioning solely as a publisher, especially since you apparently would be able to help out with the business side and some menial tasks as well as financing. If not, money is probably going to be your biggest issue.
But since you asked - people coming to you with bad games, people coming to you with potential million-dollar games that look bad at first inspection, development teams running out of funds or falling apart before completing the game, dealing with fallout from releasing buggy games, distribution, egotistical or greedy developers thinking you're getting too big of a cut and trying to cut you out after you've done your job and gotten their product out there (and the ensuing litigation), all things I can see happening.