Oh boy! I bet you have some interesting stories from that experience. I've worked with enough indie publishers that I suspect I have an idea what you're talking about.

I think the model is all wrong from top to bottom. It always strikes me as bizarre that most publishers don't have any review capacity. You'd think they'd be able to release something and get 50 reviews, but that doesn't happen. I've even come across books from major publishers that only have 5-10 reviews. Something is going on in writing that nobody wants to talk about. It's like reviews are suppressed.

Last year we did a road trip to Florida and we were listening to audiobooks. My daughter suggested a title for us. It was a decent enough book, but as you said, it was clearly a Harry Potter knock-off. Then again, Harry Potter is a monomyth knock-off so I can't fault it too much. I enjoyed the book.

The first thing I did when I signed up for Medium was create a small publication for reviews of independently published books. I can't get many eyeballs on the reviews, but I feel it's important that somebody interacts with all the titles that are released every year.

Maybe ghostwriting a book for a celebrity is the best most of us working class writers can hope for. Hey, I'd take the money!