Strategic Book Group / Strategic Book Publishing / Eloquent Books / SBM

Who is Vern Westgate - Writer/Editor? Or is this another one of Fletcher's alias'?

I'm surprised I don't have a copy of the above email sitting in my inbox. I refuse to jam up the Amazon and Barnes and Noble's message boards to do the marketing department's jobs for them. People are combative and snarky enough on these boards, especially when a new author jams up the book discussions with spam. I like my head where it is.

Evidently Vern Westgate is a Korean War vet and 'offers' writing and editing services. He gives an Idaho address.

http://cannon.aegauthorblogs.com/20...n-with-strategic-book-groups-robert-fletcher/
I came across this link posted by a Fletcher cheerleader. Apparently he's sharing some rays with his authors as of late.

And his authors are running around reviewing each others' books on Amazon, five-star all the way!

It's all so Susie-can-make-the-costumes-and-Billy's-dad-has-a-barn-c'mon-kids-let's-put-on-a-show!

We'll see them vanish in a year or so, to be replaced by new dupes.

It sucks being called a dupe- for anyone- might be true- but it sucks-

rather I would be more gentle because when this happens it feels worse then being called that-

I just wish I'd seen this thread- even in doing my homework I didn't go to blogs (should have) or message boards I went to sites with information (not that this site doesn't have that- I just wasn't thinking message boards- I should have looked - I was too excited- part of the duping process I guess....

So at the time I was trying not to be duped- and when we are- doesn't make us bad people- (saying for those that were taken in) it means we had that dream in our heads so bright it blocked out some other things-

understandable to have a dream be that strong- but with sties like these we can cut down on the glare- which is awesome-

but it sucks to come in and be called a dupe-

no offense or disrespect- just giving love to those whom were taken in by a con and now know better

I have no doubt that Writer Beware's and Absolute Write's and P&E's warnings are costing Bouncing Bobby business...and I couldn't be more delighted. To me it's a mitzvah, I think that's the term, to the entire universe of aspiring writers to tell them the truth about Robert Fletcher and his schemes, not to mention scams.

In Fletcher's lawsuit against me, Victoria, and Uncle Jim, it claimed we were costing him something like $20,000 dollars a week in author revenue.

NB: Said lawsuit was declared "frivolous" and Fletcher's operations were termed "fraud" by Superior Court Judge Thomas Connelly of Massachusetts once he examined the evidence Writer Beware had collected about Mr. Fletcher and his operations.

I figure that ought to get me into heaven right there, doncha think?

-Ann C. Crispin

You're already got a shoe in Ann.

I made a blog post last week that mentioned a couple of SBG books in the context of Amazon reviews. I started seeing a flurry of links from webmail addresses over the weekend and now I've got a few SBG authors following my blog. One has asked why SBG is considered to be "Vanity Fair". It's hard to tell if the questioner is genuinely unaware of what they're involved with.

The SBG author has posted another comment saying that they've followed up the links I had to here and SFWA, so at least they're aware now. That's my good deed done for the day and I didn't even have to leave the sofa.

Suspicious of Strategic Book Marketing (moved to SBM subforum)

So, I sent a query with a synopsis to Writer's House Literary Agency, plus the first 50 pages. I wasn't sure if I wanted them per se, but was just hitting people up to see what bites might happen. Oddly, enough, a few days later, they said that they were referring my work to a sister publisher (http://www.strategicbookmarketing.com/) who would likely want to read a full. As for my other queries, it hasn't been a long time and I've only recieved 6 rejections.

They claim that they don't charge reading fees or are a vanity publisher. However, they claim to put time into new authors and like manuscripts via e-mail. This struck me as unconventional. I know they've recently merged into one group/name. Checking on sfwa.org, they didn't have the best rep 2 years ago.

I'm not expecting to hear too many good things. Anyone have any horror stories or maybe...a good experience?

M. Scott said:

So, I sent a query with a synopsis to Writer's House Literary Agency, plus the first 50 pages. I wasn't sure if I wanted them per se, but was just hitting people up to see what bites might happen. Oddly, enough, a few days later, they said that they were referring my work to a sister publisher (http://www.strategicbookmarketing.com/) who would likely want to read a full.

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That's got to be Writers Literary Agency (a long-time fee-charger with just one possible commercial book sale since 2001), not Writer's House (an unimpeachably reputable and extremely successful literary agency).

For the full skinny, read this thread, or see this Writer's Alert at Writer Beware.

- Victoria

M. Scott said:

I'm not expecting to hear too many good things. Anyone have any horror stories or maybe...a good experience?

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As someone who has been there, done that, my advice is to pocket your money and search for another publisher.

It's very common for scammers to take names similar to reputable businesses in order to confuse their marks.

I guess that this site will allow any wacko to join. The public records, in this posters vicinity, are quite revealing. There's a long personal conflict that muddy_shoes has with this particular author. James, Victoria & Ann, he's in the IT business and knows all of the tricks. The only reviews that he's ever posted on Amazon concerned this particular author. Can we share the public records on this guy? He's just a vindictive jerk.

NYC_Writer_001:
I guess that this site will allow any wacko to join.

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Uh-huh. Way to endear yourself to the crowd.

NYC_Writer_001:
The public records, in this posters vicinity, are quite revealing. There's a long personal conflict that muddy_shoes has with this particular author.

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I don't quite follow what you're talking about here. Are you suggesting that muddy_shoes has a grudge against Robert Stanek? Even if he does, what does that have to do with Strategic Book Group et al?

NYC_Writer_001:
James, Victoria & Ann, he's in the IT business and knows all of the tricks. The only reviews that he's ever posted on Amazon concerned this particular author. Can we share the public records on this guy? He's just a vindictive jerk.

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Again, I don't really follow what you're saying here. If you're making a complaint against muddy_shoes, then you can simply report his posts. If you want to refute anything he's saying, then you can do so here. What type of public records are talking about as wanting to share? What exactly is your purpose in posting?

Seems to me based on the limited (and muddled) comments you're making here that you want to turn the discussion onto Robert Stanek and that doesn't seem to me to be appropriate for this thread. Moreover, I don't understand why you'd want to do that unless you were either Robert Stanek or a friend/follower of his - and bringing such a supportive agenda here is just a little bit tacky.

MM

Momento Mori said:

I don't quite follow what you're talking about here. Are you suggesting that muddy_shoes has a grudge against Robert Stanek?

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If he or she does, he or she will have to get in line. Stanek has been an Amazon legend (not in a good way) for years because of his aggressive self-promotion tactics.

- Victoria

victoriastrauss:
If he or she does, he or she will have to get in line. Stanek has been an Amazon legend (not in a good way) for years because of his aggressive self-promotion tactics.

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Yeah - I've heard of and had a good chuckle over Mr Stanek's antics (my favourite being his Photoshop fail with the picture of the late great Brian Jacques). Some people just keep on giving ...

MM

NYC_Writer_001 said:

I guess that this site will allow any wacko to join. The public records, in this posters vicinity, are quite revealing. There's a long personal conflict that muddy_shoes has with this particular author. James, Victoria & Ann, he's in the IT business and knows all of the tricks. The only reviews that he's ever posted on Amazon concerned this particular author. Can we share the public records on this guy? He's just a vindictive jerk.

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I obviously expected to attract a bit of flak over my blog but this is weird. Or not, I guess, considering the world we live in. The post mentions Robert Stanek entirely in passing and does little more than state what is already public knowledge and link to various other pages that discuss his behaviour. For what it's worth, I haven't written any Amazon reviews of Robert Stanek's work or any self-published author for that matter. I've certainly not had a "long personal conflict" with him and don't intend to.

I posted the blog link here because I thought it was relevant to this thread because of the interaction with customers/victims of SBG. Robert Stanek isn't relevant but you can open a thread in the self-publishing forum about him if you want to discuss his promotional tactics. If you want to talk about what a vindictive jerk I am then feel free to PM me or take it to my blog comments where only I have to ignore you. I'm pretty sure you've got me confused with someone else though as I'm more of an disinterested jerk. I can't really bring myself to care enough to be vindictive.

Edit: Actually, given NYC_Writer's link to SBG, I guess the author he's talking about is Eddie Upnick, who is an SBG author. The same response applies though, I've never written a review of Mr Upnick's work on Amazon and wasn't even aware of him until I looked at the listings to write the post. Oh, and I've just noticed that a number of the SBG book reviews that my post discusses have been removed from Amazon. It's a pity that you'd have to purge nearly all of them to be left with anything that isn't questionable.

muddy_shoes said:

Edit: Actually, given NYC_Writer's link to SBG, I guess the author he's talking about is Eddie Upnick, who is an SBG author. The same response applies though, I've never written a review of Mr Upnick's work on Amazon and wasn't even aware of him until I looked at the listings to write the post. Oh, and I've just noticed that a number of the SBG book reviews that my post discusses have been removed from Amazon. It's a pity that you'd have to purge nearly all of them to be left with anything that isn't questionable.

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People who are wondering what muddy_shoes is talking about, in regards to NYC_Writer's links to Fletcher, should probably check this other thread, page 6 and following.

It's worth noting that three days ago, after it was pointed out that NYC_Writer has gone to various sites posting in defense of Strategic, he replied,

NYC_Writer_001 said:

True . . . true . . . true. That was me for sure.

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and has not posted since. He'd promised to provide all sorts of information refuting the terrible things being said about Strategic.

He's probably sulking because I called him a troll

Nah, he went off to regroup after being identified as a sock puppet within two posts (or was it three?)

He'll be back with a different name.

I'm sure you're right. He did get his ass handed to him in record time.

C. K. Casner said:

I'm sure you're right. He did get his ass handed to him in record time.

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I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I love you guys!

Remember the widely-reported news story about little Leo Hunter, the 6-year-old who supposedly signed a 23-book contract with Strategic? The story turned out to be an attempted publicity hoax cooked up by Leo's mother, who was the actual author of the book little Leo supposedly wrote.

Well, it looks as if Strategic has now actually signed up a real child author. To top it off, according to this news story, she's handicapped. Here's what one of her parents says about how she got published:

“She had the idea and we looked on the internet for a publisher and sent off some ideas to them and they immediately contacted us with a positive response.

“She worked with an illustrator in America for 12 months to make the book, but Amy had the final say on the finished pictures, which were inspired by her words.”

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I would guess that her parents had to pay for the illustrations as well as for publication.

- Victoria