Robert Stanek and his super secret NSA powers!

[polishgenius]

but you have to admit that the Erikson love gets a little ridiculous over there sometimes.

A tad bit maybe, but on the other hand their forums sicc'd me onto The Dresden Files and Acts of Caine a lot sooner than this board would have, so ner-ner-ner.

[Captain Sheepf*cker]

A tad bit maybe, but on the other hand their forums sicc'd me onto The Dresden Files and Acts of Caine a lot sooner than this board would have, so ner-ner-ner.

Most of my TRP came from that site. I get some good rec's from this one too but it's damn near 10x the size of Malazans so taste here is too varied for me and I get more misses than I do over there..

[Jaxom 1974]

Links to substantiate the claims/flights of fancy. That's all anyone wants to see. For someone who is purportedly an internet master, why is this so hard?

[Darth Richard]

A tad bit maybe, but on the other hand their forums sicc'd me onto The Dresden Files and Acts of Caine a lot sooner than this board would have, so ner-ner-ner.

Oh I can think of a few authors were if you say a bad thing about him/her the fanboys really come out of the woodwork.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

You know the copy-pasting might actually be a sign that it's the real Stanek. The blog post linked in the OP links back to an earlier post, and the wording between the two is nearly identical. It's also, nearly to a word, the exact same rant he's posted in other places. The stuff about his awards is always the same, too.

Not to mention the whole sections of his books that were copy-pasted into one another.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I just checked the catalogue of my local library, and there are three childrens' books by Stanek there...except that it's Muriel Stanek, not Robert or William (or William Robert). Plus one by Vaclav Stanek, and one by Lou Stanek.

[Jaxom 1974]

Checked my library too, for the heck of it. Turns out some of Stanek's stuff is available. On audio only. No hard copies. If I remember, next time I'm over there I'll have to check to see if there is a way to find out the check out history of them...

[Errant Bard]

I don't know. Maybe. I still think the guy is a wee bit crazy. Check out his forum (I spent a lazy afternoon perusing it a couple months back).

I did (a few years ago.) It still fits, for me, into an obvious gameplan to pass oneself as a bestseller author: what bestseller author does not have a dedicated forum?

The craziness could be seen in the lack of subtlety with which it's done, and the violence with which negative reviews were met, but having discussed with "indie" authors (it's harder to discuss anything online with bigger name authors but it would likely be the same, I'm reminded of.. Dan Brown? who put a journalist who trashed his book as a pedophile rapist in his next book) in the past, it's a common flaw: apparently you cannot say anything negative about their work without it becoming a personal attack, and if the books don't sell, it's abviously because of piracy, that kind of things... you know, excuses.

Anyway, now that his reputation is torched, it seems a reasonable step to try to have authors with an actual fandom to comment about him, or even just to attack them because you know the fandom will react, and bad publicity is still publicity, he will get more sales from it. I'm willing to bet that when Rothfuss commented about him he saw a spike in sales. He absolutely cannot be crazy, or his communication would be way less controlled: it seems crazy, but he always stops before telling anything easily verifiable and boy does he bounce on every occasion (Amazon deletes his fake reviews: claim it was fake reviews from David Langford and that they were deleted at his demand. Get accused of sockpuppeting? Say Wert, Pat and "the mob" actually are the ones sockpuppeting to end him.) It's almost artful.

ETA: of course, if I get the links I asked, I'll eat my hat and begin to question my, wert's, Pat's, Larry's, Langford's, or Rothfuss' sanity instead.

[red snow]

Fully agreed. But like any forum, you get fanatics. Seems like about six months ago or so, someone on this very forum started a thread about how Martin was the greatest writer of all time. Of course, every response was ridicule and that's one reason I like this site.

Never been to the Erikson forum (this forum still has me undecided whether to start the books) but I thought forums about an author's series of books are bound to attract a lot of heavy praise. Otherwise why would people visit the forum? Before the TV show I'm sure the reason people came to this site was because they really enjoyed Martin's work (or were recommended by a friend). Maybe it's because we have a lto of time to fill between books that the adulation isn't as strong due to us discovering there are a ton of great SFF authors out there. I'm sure Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon forums are just as bad as Erikson's and there's a ton of others too. It just goes hand in hand.

I'm waiting for there to be so many sockpuppets they become self aware.

I'm more worried about a scenario where no-one believes anyone is real. I dread to think what it would do for my sanity (or Stanek's) if people thought I was a sockpuppet.

Also, if Stanek's sales are so low then we can't really accuse him of ripping people off can we? We can accuse him of trying to rip people off and lying but it seems it doesn't really work if all the data we have is true.

[polishgenius]

I'm more worried about a scenario where no-one believes anyone is real. I dread to think what it would do for my sanity (or Stanek's) if people thought I was a sockpuppet.

There's another board I go on where one user used to make so many alt accounts, often pretending to be someone else, that at one stage it was safer to assume that any new user was him until proven otherwise than the other way around.

It was... kind of weird.

[The Marquis de Leech]

OK. The other major public libraries in my country:

Christchurch: no Staneks at all.

Wellington (the capital): three William Staneks. They're his computer-related non-fiction.

Hamilton: one cosmetic surgery guide by a Jan Stanek.

Auckland: A relative jackpot. Thirteen Staneks. One is an Edward Stanek, six are computer guides, but there are, in fact, six examples of Robert Stanek's fiction. Four (In the Service of Dragons, Books 1-3, and Exploring Ruin Mist) are audio-only, but two (the Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches, Books 1-2) exist in physical form. Curiously, however, the two works exist at different branches of the Auckland library (there are copies of Book 1 at Avondale and St Heliers, but Book 2 only exists at Blockhouse Bay).

I hope whoever approved the Auckland purchases were judiciously dealt with.

[scavokretlaw]

Hello, Robert.

I am the owner/author of ConjugalFelicity.com and I also wrote the series of articles called "The Life and Lies of Robert Stanek". I know that you are familiar with my articles.

I want to first say that I appreciate you taking the time out of your very busy schedule to talk to us, and that I do have a few questions for you that I feel would be in your best interests to answer.

To clear up a few points first, though: I am not a published author. I have absolutely no financial motivation whatsoever behind writing the articles, beyond an interest in the truth behind a fascinating internet story. I have never harassed any of your readers, possibly because I have never encountered any of your readers. It's interesting, really: my articles have been up for years and years, and I have *never* encountered someone who even claims to be one of your millions of fans.

Setting that aside, I have a few questions for you:

1. You posted several high-resolution photographs proving you actually met Brian Jacques, but you didn't post the high-resolution version of the original photograph that caused all the trouble, leading me to believe that you photoshopped the original to make it look like you were at a booksigning event with an established author when actually you were just visiting him as a fan. To conclusively prove that you never photoshopped anything, can you please post the original high-resolution edition of the original photograph?

2. You claim to have a very high number of fans. However, there is only 1 Robert Stanek message board on the internet and the last post there was December 2nd, 2012. If you have so many fans, why have none of them posted on your message board in the past 10 months?

3. "The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches" and "Keeper Martin's Tale" are word-for-word the exact same story, as I have documented. You claim that one is the adult version and one is the children's version, but the only actual difference is that you have combined two of the children's books into one adult novel. Don't you agree that it is dishonest and misleading to market these as two different series when they are exactly the same?

4. You were banned from LibraryThing for "extensive spam activity". I personally have spoken on the phone with Tim Spalding, who is a very nice gentleman who had never even heard of you until his members reported being spammed by book recommendations authored by Robert Stanek. Don't you think it's odd that suddenly, one day out of the blue, your recommendations would start overtaking the site? Don't you think it's odd that despite the best efforts of the individuals behind this spam activity, most had duplicate IP addresses from the exact same city?

5. Amazon.com is a business that could only profit from you being a highly reviewed author. Why do you think they would delete all of your reviews, unless they had undeniable evidence that they were fake?

6. Why do you try and claim that professional publications have recommended your books when they haven't?

7. If you are friends with RA Salvatore, why do you refer to him as "Rob" instead of "Bob", which is the name he goes by?

8. Do you agree that the person who attacked Jeff Darcy, said he was a child abuser, and posted his home address online, was not you, and that you do not support their actions in any way?

9. Do you have any idea why articles about you would be deleted from Wikipedia as being "not particularly notable"?

10. Why do you tell people who write reviews critical of you to go fuck themselves on Twitter? As a professional author, shouldn't people be allowed to be dislike your writing without you cursing at them and accusing them of stalking your fans?

Cheers,

Vincent

[Stubby]

[MOD]

Due to many breaches of the forum rules, this thread is now closed.

A reminder that it is a specific breach of the rules of this forum, if you have a personal beef against a user of this or any other forum, to air out your dirty laundry. Keep it to your own blogs.

[/MOD]