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ROBERT STANEK FANS FINALLY FIND OUT WHO'S BEEN SLAMMING, DISSING, AND BADMOUTHING BOOKS
ON THE NET. TURNS OUT IT MAY BE COMPETING AUTHORS.
REVEALED BY OPEN LETTER TO AMAZON.COM
To: Amazon.com, Inc.
I believe in letting people know when they've done a good job, which is why I'm writing this letter. I wanted to tell you about a recent experience with the site content at your site that made me quite happy.
As a Robert Stanek fan, I was angry when I read the letter posted to PlanetFeedback.com from "Amy D.". I've seen malicious postings from "Amy D." of Alexandria, VA pop up all over the Internet. She (or he) has used a number of aliases that I've found, including aduncan22310, booska, fleminggd, and captainfantastic2. These are the ones I saw, at least.
Amy and her friends seemed to be obsessed with ratings on Amazon.Com. The only reason for this that I can tell is that they are or represent rival companies, books or authors. I was very pleased to see that Amazon.Com took action and removed the disparaging postings these individuals had posted to Mr. Stanek's books.
I make my living tracking down information on the Internet, and ever since I saw this activity, I have been troubled by it. I began to track down similar postings and traced them back to several individuals, including DAW Books author S.L. Farrell (Stephen Leigh Farrell), EOS author Matthew Farrell, and NAL author Gena Hale (who happens to use the pseudonym S. L. Viehl). With the similarity in names, especially the use of the initials SL, these could be the same individual or a husband/wife brother/sister writing team.
Matt Farrell and Stephen Leigh Farrell keep an online journal and their journal entries are very revealing. They seem obsessed with their online rankings and reviews at Amazon. Their journal records for January 02 to March 02 show they'd been obsessing over their books' rankings, checking daily, tracking the ratings in charts and spreadsheets, and posting all of it online. The entries also reveal just how disgruntled and angry they became when sales of their books fell short of their expectations, which is why I believe they singled out Robert Stanek as a target. He's a bestselling writer, making the transition to fantasy with great success.
Again, I applaud Amazon.Com staff for removing the disparaging postings. This incident reminded me why I think so highly of your site. As a result of this, I have every intention of shopping at your site in the future, and I definitely plan on telling others to shop there. I hope everyone responsible for this great service gets their due credit. Keep up the good work!
From
Julie
ROBERT STANEK OUTPOST HAS LEARNED POSTS TO STAR LINES UNDER NAME S.L. VEIHL (SHEILA LEIGH VEIHL) MAY HAVE BEEN MADE BY SAME PERSON. S. L. VEIHL IS PSUEDONYM FOR STEPHEN LEIGH FARRELL. APPARENTLY STEPHEN WRITES SCI-FI AND F AS A WOMAN TOO.
IN AN EVEN STRANGER TWIST THE AMY D AND ADUNCAN REFFERENCED ABOVE ARE THE SAME PERSON: AMY DUNCAN, WHO MAY IN FACT BE RELATED TO AUTHOR DAVID DUNCAN. THE PLOT THICKENS.
IT MUST SUCK TO HAVE NO TALENT. ONE WONDERS WHY TO TRY TO HURT SALES OF COMPETING BOOKS INSTEAD OF WRITING A BOOK THAT COMPETES?
Long time publishing industry insider and retired senior editor comments to Robert Stanek Outpost, calls it AUTHORGATE.
"The reason is obvious, resentment. [This person] resented the success. He disparaged under his varied psuedonymns, used connections to SFWA, to make it look real. It was one person at the center of it all, I believe. I'm shocked at how much damage one spiteful person could do. I've seen it before. No one's more bitter than an author who's struggled under a half dozen pseudonymns but can't find the fame he thinks he deserves."
"The word I heard in April was that Stanek had a high six-figure rights deal in the works. [This person] must have known and resented the hell out of it. [That deal] fell apart because of this. Meanwhile [this person] signs a 3-book deal. Makes me hate this industry enough to be glad I'm not in it any more."
"My advice to Stanek is this: keep truckin', take it in stride. Readers love your work. I am particularly fond of it myself."
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