Is there such thing as a person who books guest lectures? I'm a professional photographer. I have done numerous lectures at colleges and high schools about photography and photo assisting. This has always been for ex-professors or peers that have become professors. I thoroughly enjoy it and looking to branch out beyond my personal contacts to do about 4 of these a year.
Do you know if someone exists that is a guest lecture booker or guest lecture PR type person? I imagine this person would contact schools and try and set something up. I guess they wouldn't have to have industry-specific experience but I imagine that someone in academia with previous relationships may be more effective.
There are certainly professional speakers, who make their money by giving paid seminars, speaking at conferences, and providing bespoke training. That said, their target audience is rarely (though not never) universities, but rather companies or industrial conferences.
The problem with making speaking at universities as a career is that, in order to actually live from this, your fee needs to be high, much higher than the regular honorarium given to university speakers (if there is any honorarium at all, oftentimes the university can only cover travel). In my experience most universities will only shill out this kind of money for very targeted kinds of speeches or trainings that fill a specific, concrete need, and where they know there is a lot of interest. For example, when there is a new European funding framework coming up, many European universities will pay for a consultant to come in and hold a half-day seminar what the new rules are and how they will likely be interpreted in practice. Another exception may be very high-profile seminar series, which are often seen as publicity events for the general public.
In summary, it can't hurt to keep your eyes open, but before you take this any further you should figure out whether there really is sufficient money in this line of business.