The Read Indies Book Blog -- Discover Authors and Books.

Read Indies is a book blog for authors and readers founded in 2007 by Robert Stanek. The Read Indies community of authors and readers are dedicated to supporting independently published books. Join Robert Stanek and the Go Indie bloggers, help spread the word about independently published books. Get involved by participating in Go Indie + Free Today events / activities on Facebook, Twitter and beyond. Visit www.robert-stanek.com to learn more about our founder, or www.williamrstanek.com

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Resources for Writers



A collection of inspiration, essays, and how-to gathered from 20 years of professional writing and 12 years of indie writing!

Support this blog by buying the book. amzn.com/B00H9RPF2U

Read articles included in the book and others for free:

Worldwide Distribution for Indies
Traveling the Writer's Road
How I Made This Crazy Thing Called Writing a 20-year Career
No, Hugh Howey, Indie Writers Don't Treat Their Readers Like Dirt
Are Kindle Unlimited and Subscriptions Bad for Authors?
Paid Reviews: Myths, Truths and Misses
Showcasing You at Shows
Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated
Q&A with BookBub
Unfair Practices at Amazon
Speaking Out about Ugliness in Publishing
Taking Your Work From Print to Film
Selling Rights to Your Books
Viewpoints on Rejection Letters
Understanding Bestseller Lists
Unethical Competitors
Authors Writing Their Own Reviews
Finding Success as a Writer
How Far Indies Have Come in so Few Years
Places Books Have Been
Understanding Book Sales Data
Making Writing A Career
Chasing the Writer's Dream 1
Chasing the Writer's Dream 2
Using Twitter Effectively
Protecting Your Books from Pirates
Printing Your Own books
Amazon's Rotten Core
Supporting Veteran Authors Who Support Veterans
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Featured Post

Speaking Out About Ugliness in the Publishing Industry

Indie authors continue to get a bum rap from traditional publishers and authors. Read about the dirty tricks trad publishers and authors h...



Popular Posts

  • Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated Part 1: AwesomeGang, FussyLibrarian, Ereader News Today, EbookSoda, ReadCheaply, BookBub
    With millions of published books out there from authors, there’s no shortage of book promotion sites looking to cash in. Some of these ar...
  • Robert Stanek: One of the Most Important Voices of Our Time
    Yes, we have made Go Indie into the Robert Stanek channel, especially as we're extremely sad that Robert has retired from writing for so...
  • A Tribute to William Robert Stanek, an American Author Who Should Be on Everyone’s Must Read List
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  • Authors Who Trash Competitors
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  • Speaking Out About Ugliness in the Publishing Industry
    Indie authors continue to get a bum rap from traditional publishers and authors. Read about the dirty tricks trad publishers and authors h...
  • Authors “Writing” Their Own Reviews
    I’ve been silent on the topic of authors “writing” their own reviews for far too long. Partly because I’ve been tracking the activiti...
  • Finding Success as a Writer and Becoming a Bestselling Author
    I'm Robert Stanek and today I'm writing about finding success as a writer and becoming a bestseller.  In 1995, I attended a writer’s...
  • Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated: More Thoughts & Tips for Getting into BookBub from BookBub, Plus 20 Questions & Answers with BookBub
    So many have pinged me about Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated and asked questions that I added more to the article originally and ...

Total Visits

Insider Fraud at Amazon.com

Justice Department Identifies Ten Amazon Staff Accepting Bribes, Writing Fake Negative Reviews, Targeting Products for Take Downs When the malicious targeting of my books stopped suddenly, I thought someone must have finally caught the Amazon insiders responsible, and someone had, the Justice Department.

Current and former Amazon employees flood rivals with fake negative reviews. Corrupt former Amazon employees paid current Amazon employees to flood rivals with fake negative reviews. Amazon does same after re-producing popular products of independent sellers.

Inside Job: Amazon.com Employee Stole Credit Data of 106 Million Amazon.com is rotten to its core. This latest case of "employee gone bad" is yet another example of the widespread patterns of misbehavior, misconduct and mismanagement by Amazon.com employees that have been ongoing for the better part of two decades.

Amazon Reviews: Broken System Between 1 in 3 and 2 in 3 product reviews on Amazon.com are fake. They are bought and paid for. They are written by friends and family. They are swapped and traded on Facebook. They are incentivized from readers.

Amazon Caught in Pay-for-Praise Scheme Involving Hundreds of Employees Last August Amazon began recruiting so-called “fulfillment center ambassadors,” compensating them to generate praise for the company on twitter (and also elsewhere in social media and on Amazon’s websites). Several hundred employees have been enlisted into the highly questionable, unethical (and likely fraudulent) scheme so far.

Amazon Fraud Again: Amazon Employees Caught Creating Fake Ebay Seller Accounts In 2018, at least 50 Amazon employees were caught red handed creating fake accounts on Ebay and accused of multiple federal crimes, including criminal conspiracy, fraud and racketeering. Over a period of years, the Amazon employees had created hundreds—if not thousands—of fake seller accounts to lure sellers away from Ebay’s marketplace.

Amazon's Black Eye Deepens: A Public Sham/e Speaking out about fake reviews has made me the target of the thousands who make their living writing reviews for pay. This continues despite Amazon's public dispute with over 5000 paid reviewers at Fiverr--no few of which were writers, who unable to make a living at writing, made their living writing reviews.

Amazon Still Has a Review Problem. A Solution That Could Actually Resolve It. A visit to Amazon will take you to lots of products with oodles of reviews and the problem is that it's extremely likely most of these reviews are bogus. What percentage? Estimates vary widely, but my research says about 60% or so. Simply mentioning this fact, as I have for many years, makes me a target for those who make their living at this—whether they are merchants selling products or those who make a living by writing product reviews.

Amazon's Blackened Soul To date, there are about a billion reviews at Amazon sites that don’t meet Amazon’s own criteria for acceptability. This represents about 3 out of every 5 reviews. Is it any wonder when Amazon’s own management and executive staff are allowed to break the rules when it suits them to target an author whose book wasn’t as flattering as Amazon hoped it would be. Yes, I’m talking about....

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About Our Host

Go Indie
Go Indie is hosted by Robert Stanek. Over the past three decades, Robert Stanek has written more than 150 books for traditional publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Random House, Macmillan, Pearson, Microsoft, O'Reilly and leading others. Robert Stanek also has two decades of indie experience, starting with the 2001 publication of his runaway best-selling Keeper Martin's Tale and The Kingdoms & the Elves of the Reaches. With over 2.5 million readers of the series, the Kingdoms books were the earliest breakout series in the indie revolution. Not only were the Kingdoms books the first serialized e-books to appear on Amazon, they were the very first Sci-Fi books to break into the Amazon Top 50 (Feb/Mar 2002). In another first, the Kingdoms books were the first indie books to hit #1 in audio at Audible.com where they dominated the bestseller charts for THREE years (#1 fiction for 14 weeks 2005, 167 weeks Top 10 YA 2005-2008).
View my complete profile

Summer of Indie

Summer of Indie 1 & 2

Summer of Indie 3

Like RS on Facebook!

Welcome to Read Indies!

Robert Stanek, the host of Read Indies and founder of Go Indie, is the creator of Bugville Critters, Magic Lands, and Ruin Mist. On Facebook, he posts regularly to his author page. You'll find him on twitter @ http://twitter.com/robertstanek.

His other blogs include: Around the Town Books and Books & Things. Find his blog archives here.

Visit his other sites:

Magic Lands – www.themagiclands.com

Imagined Lands – www.imaginedlands.com

Official Author Site – www.robertstanek.com

Ruin Mist: The Lost Ages – www.ruinmistmovie.com

Books by Robert Stanek

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Oyster Books

iBooks & iTunes

Resources for Writers

Worldwide Distribution for Indies

Traveling the Writer's Road

How I Made This Crazy Thing Called Writing a 20-year Career

No, Hugh Howey, Indie Writers Don't Treat Their Readers Like Dirt

Are Kindle Unlimited and Subscriptions Bad for Authors?

Paid Reviews: Myths, Truths and Misses

Showcasing You at Shows

Unfair Practices at Amazon

Speaking Out about Ugliness in Publishing

Taking Your Work From Print to Film

Selling Rights to Your Books

Viewpoints on Rejection Letters

Understanding Bestseller Lists

Unethical Competitors

Authors Writing Their Own Reviews

Finding Success as a Writer

How Far Indies Have Come in so Few Years

Places Books Have Been

Understanding Book Sales Data

Making Writing A Career

Chasing the Writer's Dream 1

Chasing the Writer's Dream 2

Using Twitter Effectively

Protecting Your Books from Pirates

Printing Your Own books

Amazon's Rotten Core

Supporting Veteran Authors Who Support Veterans

Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated

Q&A with BookBub

Popular Posts

  • Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated Part 1: AwesomeGang, FussyLibrarian, Ereader News Today, EbookSoda, ReadCheaply, BookBub
    With millions of published books out there from authors, there’s no shortage of book promotion sites looking to cash in. Some of these ar...
  • Robert Stanek: One of the Most Important Voices of Our Time
    Yes, we have made Go Indie into the Robert Stanek channel, especially as we're extremely sad that Robert has retired from writing for so...
  • A Tribute to William Robert Stanek, an American Author Who Should Be on Everyone’s Must Read List
    My name is Jennifer Blake. This guest post is in honor of William Robert Stanek, an author recently named “an American author who should be ...
  • Translating JA Konrath Translating John Sargent: Are Subscription Models Bad For Authors?
    I'm Robert Stanek, a successful indie author since 2001 and a successful pro author since 1994. Joe Konrath is quite outspoken about...
  • Authors Who Trash Competitors
    My first book was published by Macmillan in 1995. That bestselling book—Electronic Publishing Unleashed—and it’s bestselling follow up—Web ...

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