Robert Stanek

What with the numerous discussions popping up about various self-published authors who rely on dubious schemes to promote their books, I thought I might as well tune you all on to my latest project, taking on perhaps the most relentlessly driven of them all, Robert Stanek.




Robert Stanek is a self-published author. He writes (among other things) crummy fantasy set in the world of Ruin Mist, which, like most of the things that Stanek writes, has a truly idiotic title. These fantasy books, understandably passed over by all legitimate publishing companies, are self-published by Reagent Press, a (very) small “publishing” “company” that features “bestselling” “authors” Robert Stanek, William Stanek (also Robert Stanek)…and that’s about it. I’m sorry for the excessive quotation marks, but I’m only using these words in their very loosest definition.

And his books have a nearly perfect 5-star rating on Amazon.com.

How?

Well, Stanek is a very driven individual, one who is in possession of at least 285 different user accounts on Amazon.com (I take this number based on the number of five-star reviews his main series has gotten). He then writes dozens of glowing reviews of his books, comparing them to Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling (frequently saying that his are better). He is also known to go and write reviews of other, more popular books, using sentences like “In style of such bestselling fantasy authors as J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and Robert Stanek” to make people think he’s actually famous, despite them never hearing of him.

When real people are tricked into buying his books, they tend to leave extremely negative reviews. Stanek got around this by pestering Amazon to delete the one-star reviews, engaging his detractors under various accounts and claiming they’re a trolling “hate group”, and writing even more five-star reviews. In recent months, Amazon has finally started to crack down on Stanek, and there are now a few one-star reviews that are up and have remained up for some time.

His website - www.robertstanek.com - is an ego-stroking wankfest that is made even funnier to peruse when you realize that everything on it is Robert Stanek writing about himself in the third person. On it, he describes his writing talents in nauseating detail, talks about his service in the armed forces (doubtful), and occasionally posts photographs of himself photoshopped in with Brian Jacques, pretending to be at an author signing (the picture is also on my sporkings site).

So I decided the spork the guy. I actually bought a copy of one of his books off of Amazon - used, there's no way I'm giving him any of my money - but it turned out that the book I bought was actually just the exact same story as his main series. Stanek pretends that it's his story "retold" from a "different point of view", but actually it's the exact same book, with a few chapters switched around, and a few words changed here and there, in an attempt to trick people into buying more books. 

You can read the sporkings on my livejournal, or on  http://conjugalfelicity.wikispaces.com/ - posted simultaneously, generally speaking. As a little taste of the head-banging stupidity present in this series, here's an image of the map from the front of the book (red mine):









Interestingly, Stanek shares a trait with many other self-published authors in being extremely hostile to his critics. He claims (in numerous places) to have been under attack by a 'hate group' that is intent upon ruining his life and his career, and who have cost him millions of dollars through their vicious and illegal slander. Said hate group being, of course, people who point out that his books are shit and that he's a fraud. He frequently threatens litigation against websites that discuss his fraudulent behavior, and has his 'lawyer' send threatening emails from a hotmail account.