Well it's hard to give advice without knowing what your friend's goal is (speaking ? reading ?) and what he is willing to do, but here is what I did, for what it's worth. 

I already knew the alphabet (from learning Urdu). I started by reading Mace's "Persian grammar" for fun; it took three days. Actually I did not know I was going to learn Persian at that point, but I liked the grammar, so I started using the French Assimil book for Persian ("Le persan sans peine"); it comes with audio recordings. After a week I tried speaking in Persian to some Iranian colleagues, and they laughed a lot, so I started listening to the podcast on the website http://www.chaiandconversation.com/, which is useful though very elementary. I also read parts of Thackston's "An introduction to Persian" and Lambton's "Persian grammar", but I prefer Mace's book. I tried reading some children's books and the Persian translation of Roald Dahl's "Matilda" but it was a bit hard. After 5 weeks I started taking lessons with teachers on italki. I try to have lessons twice a week or more, with different teachers so I won't get used to just one person's accent, and now I can read books on my own. This fall I'm planning to take university classes in Persian, I'm not doing it for credit so I'll try to join the advanced classes and see what happens. Maybe I'll try the classes at the Iranian cultural center too. But for speaking and listening practice, I think it's hard to beat the one-one-one classes with the italki teachers.

(Wow, my message is too long for italki.)

Expanding vocabulary : I don't try to expand my vocabulary. It comes from reading and doing homework for the classes.

Unvocalized texts : Actually, not knowing how to pronounce new words is not a problem that is unique to Persian. For example, English spelling is not logical, so you cannot know how to pronouce a new word from just seeing it written; it was a problem for me when I was learning, and when I came to the US people laughed a lot at my mistakes. And in Russian, the vowels are writtem but their pronunction depends on where the stress falls in the word, which is not indicated. So I decided to just ignore this problem. As I get better, I can read more and more words correctly.

Another way to overcome this problem would be to read a text for which you have a recording. For example, it's easy to find recordings of poems on youtube, though those aren't the easiest texts. You can also find a recording of the Persian translation of "The little prince" there :
http://behdad.org/books/shamlou/thelittleprince/text/thelittleprince.html

I also have a book of extracts of literary texts with a CD of audio recordings, it's called "Lectures persanes" (French title, so the translations of the texts are in French, but still it has the Persian texts and the Persian audio). Also, the guy from the website http://www.easypersian.com/ recorded himself reading some stories (look for it in the later lessons). Otherwise, if I really need to know how to pronounce a word, I look it up on www.forvo.com.

As for what to read : Personally, I find most children's books boring. (Though not all.) And I don't want to read Harry Potter in yet another language. So I made a list of books such that 1/ I have read them already several times 2/ I like them enough to want to read them again 3/ I know the language in them is not too complicated (so, not "Moby Dick" !). Which means I'm reading translations and not books written by Iranians, but I'm okay with that for now. (Later I will read real Persian books.) That kind of list is probably very personal, but I can tell you what mine is. I started with Christopher Haddon's "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime", about a month after I started learning Persian. It was very hard going at first, but when I got to the end I could understand almost every word. Now I am in the middle of Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never let me go". Next on the list is Albert Camus's "L'etranger", it will be harder because the language is more literary.
A lot of the resources from the other thread are great, I'm not sure if this was cited :
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/persian_teaching_resources/
I didn't read the books but the "Cafe Denj" series is pretty cool.

Anyway my study routine: When I leave the house and go to work the first thing I do is open Anki on my phone and use it on the way to the office. When it comes to revising vocab, Anki is the best thing since sliced bread (though it's often misused, eg. downloading huge lists of decontextualised, unfamiliar new vocab). I won't describe what Anki is here, but if you're not familiar with it it's well worth a Google search. I set my Anki to provide 50-60 cards a day, half of which I review on the way to work and half on the way home.

While I would love to do some real reading of books and newspapers, at my low level long texts are just too opaque to be of much use. However from learning Chinese I've found that instant messaging is a perfectly valid form of reading practice that's authentic while being appropriate for lower levels, and I like to keep in touch with Iranian friends on Skype and Telegram - all of these people I've met through Italki, since I live in China, which isn't exactly brimming with Iranians to hang out with in person! I'm very fortunate to be an English native speaker, as many Iranians are keen to practice their English online.

It depends on his level and desires. If you know it, you can make some material by yourself. It's not gonna be an easy work. Good Luck!