Court documents filed in the US have revealed the editorial concerns of the publisher Simon & Schuster about the manuscript of the “alt-right” controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos’s autobiography Dangerous.

Having reportedly secured the book for an advance of $255,000 (£200,000), Simon & Schuster cancelled the deal in February after a recording emerged that appeared to show Yiannopoulos endorsing sex between “younger boys” and older men.

In July, Yiannopoulos set out to sue Simon & Schuster for $10m for breach of contract. As part of the case, Simon & Schuster have submitted documents that reveal the problems they had with the book. Among other criticisms, the publisher’s notes say Yiannopoulos needed a “stronger argument against feminism than saying that they are ugly and sexless and have cats” and that another chapter needs “a better central thesis than the notion that gay people should go back in the closet”.

In addition to the documents, a full copy of an early manuscript of the book, complete with the Simon & Schuster editor Mitchell Ivers’s notes, is available to download from the New York state courts’ website.

Court document from New York County reveals the editor’s notes on the manuscript for Milo Yiannopoulos’ cancelled book Photograph: New York Unified Court System

The tone is set in notes on the prologue to the manuscript. Ivers writes to Yiannopoulos: “Throughout the book, your best points seem to be lost in a sea of self-aggrandizement and scattershot thinking,” and adds: “Careful that the egotistical boasting … doesn’t make you seem juvenile.”

“Add something like this – only less self-serving” reads another comment early in the manuscript.

Ivers frequently calls on Yiannopoulos to back up his assertions in the text. In the first nine pages of chapter one, notes include: “Citations needed”, “Do you have proof of this?”, “Unsupportable charge” and “Cite examples”.

Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after his role in the online harassment of the Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones. The editor makes several notes asking the author to tone down racism in the text. “Delete irrelevant and superfluous ethnic joke,” Ivers writes of a passage about taxi drivers. “Let’s not call South Africa ‘white’” is another request, while elsewhere Yiannopoulos is reprimanded for using the phrase “dark continent” about Africa.

Yiannopoulos, who was filmed singing America the Beautiful while the white nationalist leader Richard Spencer and others gave the Hitler salute in the audience, is also criticised for attempting to suggest that the Hollywood left is more racist than Nazis. “I don’t like using Nazi analogies. Ever,” is the editor’s note.

Yiannopoulos is repeatedly warned his choice of words is undermining any argument he is attempting to make. “The use of phrases like ‘two-faced backstabbing bitches’ diminishes your overall point,” reads one comment. “Too important a point to end in a crude quip” is another. “Unclear, unfunny, delete,” reads another.

The early sections of a chapter on feminism prompt the note: “Don’t start chapter with accusation that feminists = fat. It destroys any seriousness of purpose.” Yiannopoulos goes on to criticise contemporary feminism as “merely a capitalist con-job – a money-grab designed to sell T-shirts to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans with asinine slogans”. “Um … like your MILO SWAG?” the editor responds.

Ivers’s evident exasperation becomes clear by page 84, where Yiannopoulos’s call for lesbians to be thrown out of academia altogether simply elicits the all-upper-case comment: “DELETE UGH.”

On Wednesday, Ivers “retweeted without comment” Publishing Perspectives’ Editor-in-Chief Porter Anderson pointing out that Ivers’ overall review described the book as “at best, a superficial work full of incendiary jokes with no coherent or sophisticated analysis of political issues”.

However, the emergence of the notes have not allowed Simon & Schuster to escape continued criticism for their initial striking of a deal with Yiannopoulos, or their editorial efforts to make his ideas more palatable to the market.

The publisher knew who Yiannopoulos was when they gave him a $255,000 advance. The editor’s brutal comments are somewhat entertaining, but none of this should distract from the fact that they sought to make his bigotry both digestible and marketable. https://t.co/Ssg20zht0h — Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) December 28, 2017

The comments from Ivers came to wider attention when excerpts were posted to Twitter by software engineer Sarah Mei, who suggested some of them might make great observations to use in the future.

Will immediately start using “if you want to make a case for [fucking ridiculous thing], you’re going to have to employ a lot more intellectual rigor than you use here.” 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/WV8xwt8cwj — Sarah Mei (@sarahmei) December 28, 2017

Dangerous was eventually self-published in July 2017. While Yiannopoulos claimed that it had sold 100,000 copies in its first few days on sale, data revealed that it had in fact sold fewer than 20,000.