Robert Stanek shat directly into my soul.

[Lichen]

It looks like Stanek has realized there's a growing opposition on two Good Reads reviews.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1002616.The_Kingdoms_and_the_Elves_of_the_Reaches

(He's responded to the two one-stars...)

I'm only getting "Sorry, we couldn't find that review" errors when trying to read these :unsure:

[Hooplehead]

I'm only getting "Sorry, we couldn't find that review" errors when trying to read these :unsure:

Yeah, interesting that you can still read the negative reviews, but apparently "Mr. Stanek's" comments have been deleted.

[Lichen]

Yeah, interesting that you can still read the negative reviews, but apparently "Mr. Stanek's" comments have been deleted.

I wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly remembered and deleted those comments by monitoring this message board.

[prone_to_say_stupid_things]

I wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly remembered and deleted those comments by monitoring this message board.

I wrote one of the negative reviews (being one of the unfortunates who bought Kingdom and the Elves of the Reaches and managed to read it all). The comments from “Simon”/Stanek were along the lines that I needed therapy and perhaps should be institutionalized. Hey, at least that is better than being shanked in prison. Oh – and that he and everybody he knows loves Stanek.

Then this morning he sends me a personal message to my Goodreads mailbox which says:

from: Simon

to: Cathy Dark

subject: What's your problem?

message: What is your major malfunction? Are you one of those crazies? Or what?

[Acid Rainbow]

I wouldn't be surprised if he is among us on this message board right now....

I wrote one of the negative reviews (being one of the unfortunates who bought Kingdom and the Elves of the Reaches and managed to read it all). The comments from “Simon”/Stanek were along the lines that I needed therapy and perhaps should be incardinated in a mental institution. Hey, at least that is better than being shanked in prison. Oh – and that he and everybody he knows loves Stanek.

Then this morning he sends me a personal message to my Goodreads mailbox which says:

from: Simon

to: Cathy Dark

subject: What's your problem?

message: What is your major malfunction? Are you one of those crazies? Or what?

Ask him what his problem is, since he apparently spends all his day talking to himself online.

[prone_to_say_stupid_things]

Ask him what his problem is, since he apparently spends all his day talking to himself online.

I don't want to get in a personal discussion with the man. I just want to know that he is aware that his fraud is not going unnoticed - and to warn others about giving him their money for his books.

I had to rewrite my review since my original and the other 1 star review got deleted. I got an email from Goodreads that says "Please refrain from making personal statements about authors on Goodreads ... If you don't refrain from such activity in the future, we will have no choice but to review your account for deletion." I'm sure Stanekk must have contacted them - as he does with Amazon all the time.

Although I think it was Goodreads that removed the comments first - before deleting the reivews.

Robert Stanek works fast. How many hours a week does he spend monitoring the criticism written about him?

[Jaerv]

being one of the unfortunates who bought Kingdom and the Elves of the Reaches and managed to read it all

:wideeyed: :blink: :uhoh: :shocked:

and, um, how do you feel now?

[BookWyrm]

Admittedly, the other review was my own. I got a message from the Simon account:

"What's your problem? Are you like crazy or something?"

But I didn't get anything from Goodreads itself.

I think from here on out I'm going to leave the man to his misery barring of course our fun conversations on Westeros.

[Jaerv]

Well, this thread made me curious, so I read the first five pages of The Kingdoms and the Elfes of the Reaches via the Amazon Look Inside service.

The problem is that the text is not bad enough to be entertaining. Its only boring like hell, and that's that.

Maybe its a good cure for sleepless people. I definitely have to go to bed now *yawns*

[sargraf]

Stanek makes sure that his books always appear on the "If you liked this, then try this" columns you'll find on every product page, by using his sockpuppet accounts to compare his crap novels to real writing.

To think I've been putting so much stock in Amazon's rating & review system... I feel all grown up and disillusioned.

[Gilead]

I just spent a couple minutes imagining that every person in this thread apart from myself was an alternate account of Robert Stanek's and I got so confused and disoriented I had to shut my monitor off.

The irony here is Stanek's faux-reviews for his horrendous novels are friggin' compelling.

Some of them are subtlety placed and'll just pop up out of nowhere and really fucking surprise you.

Like, where the fuck did this come from?

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Ship-Liveship-Traders-Book/product-reviews/0553575643/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1U1A3KGAKLY76

Robert Stanek should combine all of his interests and compile the entirety of his psychotic internet ramblings into one massive How-To guide to successful fantasy self-promotion.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

In the threads section about The Name of the Wind there's a pretty well-known discussion or two with a bunch of weird, sock-puppet alts bashed Pat Rothfuss and accused him of using shill accounts and friends/family to flood the book with 5-star reviews.

Here's some links to two of the threads.

[pat5150]

Hey, at least that is better than being shanked in prison.

Dude,

Wert and I are special cases! :P

Patrick

[The Pita]

Pat, if I told you how much I loved you, you would freak out and black out the window. Not that one, the one to the right of that one.

[BookWyrm]

I'm only getting "Sorry, we couldn't find that review" errors when trying to read these :unsure:

Sorry he had them deleted. :(

[Acid Rainbow]

We should make an anti-Stanek group on facebook, which will have many more fans than the Stanek group.

[mormont]

We should make an anti-Stanek group on facebook, which will have many more fans than the Stanek group.

Yes, it would - but what's the point? What would that prove?

All it would do is validate Stanek's claims to be persecuted, and by extension lend his 'career' some credibility. Stanek is an idiot, yes, and his behaviour seems bizarre - but talking about it only draws more attention to him, which is not a good idea IMO.

[Happy Ent]

- but talking about it only draws more attention to him, which is not a good idea IMO.

I'm not entirely convinced.

Many years ago, when I started listening to audiobooks because of Song of Ice and Fire, I was looking for new material. Stanek's books looked pretty damn attractive from their Amazon reviews, and I was this close to buying them. Being habitually careful about my purchases, I investigated other sources of opinion, but nothing was known back then. It looked exactly like the kind of hidden gem that it claimed to be.

Only sheer luck got me to buy The Historian Kostova (now I know how to kill Dracula

Spoiler

Bore him to death

,) easily the most boring audiobook I ever heard, and something like a gazillion times superiour to Stanek's trash.

The Stanek warning sites still don't have sufficiently high page rank to be easily found by google, but they're getting there. The search suggestions that google sends back are pretty good already. More attention helps.

Edit: Of course, an anti-Stanek Facebook group is indeed counter-productive. But sites that document his systematically fraudulent behaviour are welcome.

[slim da reaper]

All this scorn is so sad, all these poor people who hate art because they don’t understand it.

But I will not break. To be a genius is not a gift, it is an obligation, making suicide unthinkable.

I will endure. I will keep working, always remembering the others who were misjudeged by the world throughout their lives: Hölderlin, Kafka, Trakl, and all the others…

I will keep writing!

One day it will be: Hölderlin, Kafka, Trakl, Stanek.

Just reading Jaerv's post again confirms why I disgree with mormont so much. Stanek relies on things being hidden, not talked about. It takes a certain type of person to imply that he has suicidal thoughts, which if his delusions are brought down, suicide would be all that would be left to him. That type of person is a manipulative bully.

I think mormont has a concern for someone elses life, which is laudable, but Stanek has zero intention of commiting suicide, you call such a person on their claims, you do not give in to him.

A google search of Robert Stanek gives me a page saying Robert Stanek is legitimate, his credibility is there.

I find his mentioning of suicide the actions of a 10 year old, except he's in his thirties and making money from this.

[mormont]

If you have a problem with Stanek's tactics on Amazon - and I agree that there are plenty of grounds to do so - complain about them to Amazon. That's fair enough. People should be warned about his phony reviews, etc.

But an anti-Stanek FB group, specifically, would just validate his excuses about 'being persecuted'. I'm not concerned about his life, in fact: I'm concerned that the more attention you pay to a crackpot, the more publicity you give them, the more people hear of him, and the more might decide to give his books a try. There's good evidence, for example, that the high-profile exposure of crop circles as fraudulent, while convincing thousands of readers that there was nothing to it, actually increased the number of believers by raising the profile of the phenomenon. So with Stanek: the more you talk about what a fraud he is, the more people hear of him, and the more who might decide to buy his books.

Obscurity is what Stanek deserves. Give him it.