Providing frank feedback on friend’s self publishing dream
A friend of a friend self-published his book in early 2025. He spent a huge amount of money on fiver editors, cover design and book layout but they honestly seem to have taken him for a ride as the final product looks very amateur. The release didn’t go well, a few in person sales to friends and a small number on Amazon which led to a single 1-star review on Goodreads and a 5-star from a colleague on Amazon.
The friend is now talking about trying for a rerelease, adding an extra chapter, going for a new (AI-generated) cover and focusing on social media posts to generate some more attention. Unfortunately he is already spending big money again ($500 for cover and $500 for marketing advice) at a time his job is looking unstable.
I can’t bear to see him spend such money so I asked that he pause the rerelease and let me have a read of the book (I have a couple of books out with about 3000 sales so thought I could offer a little guidance). Before offering any feedback I asked what he wanted to achieve with the book, if success was just getting a book out there or if he had specific sales or reception in mind. He replied 4 star average review and 10,000 sales, though admitted that he might need to address some of the typos he knew about in the initial release.
When I finally got a chance to read the first 10,000 words of the book, it was as bad as I had thought. It is honestly a 1- to 2-star book, with typos, purple prose, massive info dumps, changing tenses, modern language in a high fantasy book, lots of tropes etc. It honestly seems like the project needs to be shelved to work on something new or massively reworked. I’ve previously offered to workshop the book and help with edits but he insisted on rushing the publication, not wanting to risk getting negative feedback from others.
So I’m now in this awkward position of breaking the news to them. I put my thoughts and annotations in an email but my girlfriend says it is way too harsh so I haven’t hit send. Life is crazy busy at the moment meaning seeing him to discuss will be tricky.
How would you folks want to receive this feedback and do you have any tips on how to deliver it?