If Eric never says anything to you, dear God, don’t bring it up.
If he does, though, just get him to do the talking. ‘Yeah, I just finished with it! I was interested to know - what made you decide to give the Michael character a tail/self-publish/set it inside your sock/whatever?’ He’s probably dying to talk about his masterpiece. Let him do that for a while, then say ‘Well, thanks again for the autographed copy - I really appreciate it!’ and move on to something else.
Just to give a bit more information, Eric is a super nice guy and has always treated me very well at work. I would never say anything about his book that would hurt his feelings. I am also admin for his group so while I don’t answer to him, he is one of my superiors.
Get him talking. You know, something like “I really admire that you could sit down and write a whole book. What a daunting challenge. Hw did you get stated, what was your inspiration, etc.” Wannabe writers generally lap up an audience that their inner muse can expound to.
I dunno. I think this is risky. If you encourage him to talk about his book, he’s going to take that as a sign you were interested in his book. And at some point, he’s going to ask you what you thought about it. He’ll ask you something like “Did you think the London scene in the third chapter was okay? I was worried that having the doctor meet Jane so early would be a bad idea because she’d ask him about Bob. I was thinking about dropping the doctor from that scene and not having him meet Jane until the party. But on the other hand, then I’d have to explain how Bob knew about the dog. What do you think?”
Look, if he’s serious about writing, he’s got to get a thick skin. Don’t say anything unless asked. If asked, say “I didn’t like it.” If he asks why, then maybe there’s hope for him, and you can tell him what you found wrong. If he gets defensive, nod and move on.
Heh, half of my friends being involved in the theatre has prepared me for this situation. Here is what I do, my SOP, that I reserve for acquaintances (friends get it straight up from me):
Find one good thing to say, so read enough for 1 good thing. In my case, when it’s bad, it would be “great lighting design” or something. In your case it might be “the protagonist’s cat really struck a cord with me, he’s just like my own cat”.
Do not lie! Lying backfires.
Ask questions, as other posters suggested. “How did you come up with…?” or “Did you ever just get stuck?”
If he asks your opinion on something in particular, be kind & constructive, but tell him. He asked for it, it means you can tell him. If he didn’t want to hear it he shouldn’t have asked. If he wants to write he needs to learn about criticism.
If you don’t want to go down that road at all then of course you can just dodge the issue. But you would be denying him the opportunity to learn. Think about all those people who embarrassed themselves on those popstar programmes: nobody ever had the guts to tell them they are crap. That’s sad. No, it isn’t your sworn duty to right the wrongs of the world, but doing just a tiny little bit wouldn’t hurt.
The problem there is your risking your relationship with a friend and co-worker in order to act as a book reviewer for him. As Jedediah Leland found out, you should only offer impartial negative criticism of somebody’s work when there’s no other relationship involved.
Your family and friends are there to offer you unconditional and uncritical support. There’s plenty enough strangers in the world who don’t give a damn about your feelings and will give you all the blunt criticism you’ll need.
Scan the entire book into a big PDF file (or several). Post it on-line where we can all read it.
Organize a sign-up list where the SDMB Doper community can volunteer to read – everybody who wants to help can sign up to read one page. (How many pages long is it?) Then we’ll all have one big thread where we write you a crowd-sourced Cliff Notes style summary.
I have a friend who is a successful author, selling very well all over the world, but I really don’t like her books at all. I’ve tried several times to get into them, but they just don’t do it for me. It is my kind of genre, just not my kind of execution.
She is still a friend, we are in contact online, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she assumed I am still reading her books, so I sincerely hope she never asks me about them, because I don’t know what I would say.
I think some of the advice given here about being straightforward and giving candid feedback is excellent for a friend. Friends should appreciate and value your honesty.
This guy is a coworker. Maybe a friendly coworker, but this is an office relationship. Stick with the “very different from what I usually read, I’m impressed you had the determination and ability to write an entire book” lines.
At best it wouldn’t help; most likely it would hurt, if only in the sense that banging your head against a wall hurts. If nobody had the guts to tell them they are crap and everybody has been blowing sunshine up their ass, they’re just not going to believe the one person who’s honest with them. “Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man!”
I have a friend who wants to be a writer. He says he’s wanted to write since he was a small child. We exchange infrequent emails. I have to read his emails several times just to parse them. He simply can’t put together a sentence in his native language. But he wants to be a writer. And since no one, not even his teachers, has given him candid feedback on his writing, he dismisses any criticism from me as just my opinion.
Never try to teach a pig to sing - it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Why? Any author who expects everybody to be into the genre he writes needs to see a proctologist. Nobody has ever written a book everybody likes; take any best-seller and you’ll find as many people who love it as people who hate it as people who just don’t read that type of book.
That’s why you shouldn’t just go ahead and tell him it’s crap, but respond to specific questions. If he asks what you think of the main character, you say that he might’ve been a little more dimensional, and that you always like it in novels when the protagonist has some sort of journey of development, but this guy is the same all the way through etc etc.
Maybe it won’t help. But I just think the world let down those people on telly, screeching & whining & embarrassing themselves in front of everyone watching. When you watch you always remark to each other that someone should’ve been honest with them. But everyone is always too chicken shit to be that someone. You don’t have to say “you’re shit, stop writing” and you don’t have to teach him how to write, but if everyone answers his questions at least maybe he’ll understand that he’s not god’s gift to literature.
Don’t know about the OP’s coworker, but my friend’s questions tend to begin and end with “Isn’t this great?” They’re not so much questions as praise-trolling. He also tends, in general, to be stuck on “send” - he doesn’t seem to hear responses to the few questions he does ask.
It’s not enough for someone to be honest with people like this - it simply won’t work unless everyone is honest with them. As long as someone is praising them - or at least not telling them their work is crap - they have an excuse to believe their work is good.
I blame nice people. My friend thinks he really has a chance to work as a paid writer. He keeps getting turned down nicely - the rejections are always supportive and enouraging. They’re giving him false hope, and he’s getting angry that employers are refusing to hire him.
And praise-trolling, now that’s just rude. That should not be encouraged. I’d walk away, don’t engage. Give them a time-out on the naughty step. It’s not acceptable. Unfortunately, this is incredibly common among (shitty, failed and amateur) actors. It’s quite possibly more embarrassing than Xfactor failures.
