We want to thank the millions who have visited Zon Alert and Fiverr Report, and the countless thousands who have thanked us for exposing Fiverr and working with Amazon to bring them down. Our work would not have been possible without our founder Harvey Chute. Harvey was devastated by the widespread fraud he saw while operating KBoards.com. He wanted this to be his legacy and we’ve worked to ensure that happened. As the criminal investigations continue against those named here, our work is not done.
Zon Alert – Call to Action
Zon Alert members have identified dozens of fraudsters at Amazon. The worst offenders are listed below on the Do Not Buy List.
Suggested Reading:
The Many Faces of Carolyn Arnold
When Authors Have No Shame: The Carmen DeSousa Story
When the Crime Author is a Criminal – The Carolyn Arnold Story
The Online World is Overrun with Fake Reviews
The Shameful Fake Writing Awards of Melissa Foster
A Con Artist at Work: Carolyn Arnold and Her Fakery
Tracking the Fraud of Melissa Foster
The Hugh Howey Tirade: Exposing Amazon’s Biggest Fraudster
Caught Red Handed: Melissa Foster and Hugh Howey
The Crazed Antics of Cheating Authors
The Thumbs Down Author List: Fraudsters Identified
Melissa Foster Joins Hugh Howey in Buying Her Way Onto New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Lists
Writers Beware: Joining World Literary Café May Irreparably Damage Your Career
Amazon and Others Purge Thousands of Fake Hugh Howey Ratings and Reviews
Hugh Howey Attacks Serial Novelists
The Truth Behind the Rise of Wool and Hugh Howey
Melissa Foster Continues to Attack Other Authors
The Crazed Racist Rants of Hugh Howey
Investigating Misconduct at Amazon
Where’s Zon Been?
Zon Alert has been on extended hiatus as our founding member was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and passed away September 25, 2015. Although Zon went quiet out of our deep respect for him and his struggle, it also is our respect for him that makes us want to continue his work. Though we no longer have access to the resources of his boards, the private member discussions or internal Amazon access for our deepest research, we will endeavor on to work toward revealing truth.
Another reason for our return is that another of our founding members, a retired DC PD detective, is working to get an attempted murder indictment against Melissa Foster for her role in paying someone to attack a writer she was at odds with. The vicious attack left the writer crippled and without a means to support herself or her family.
The Do Not Buy List
Authors on this list have been identified as having conducted extensive fraud.
A M Hargrove
A Meredith Walters
Aaron Pogue
Alle Wells
Amanda Hocking
Ann Mullen
Ann Swann
Ashley Fontainne
B V Larson
Bella Forrest
Betty Dravis
Blake Crouch
Brandon Sanderson
C C Cole
Carmen DeSousa
Carolyn Arnold
Cassia Leo
Cege Smith
Cheryl Kaye Tardiff
Christine Steendam
Collette Scott
D A Graystone
D Ryan Leask
Daniel Arenson
David A Wells
David Dalglish
Debora Geary
Dixie Goode
Dr. S Drecker
E L Lindley
Edie Claire
Elizabeth Reyes
Emma Chase
Erica Stevens
Erin Hunter
Frederick Lee Brooke
Gail McHugh
H M Ward
Hugh Howey
Ilona Andrews
J A Hunsinger
J A Konrath
J S Scott
Jaime Rush
James Dean
Jasinda Wilder
Jay Allan
Jennifer Chase
Jennifer Probst
Jessica Sorensen
Jillian Dodd
Joanna Lee Doster
John Locke
K Bromberg
Karen DeLabar
Karen Vaughan
Kenneth Hoss
Kerry Reis
Kirkus MacGowan
L J Kentowski
Linda Giron
Linda Hawley
Linda S Prather
Linda S Prather
Lorena Angell
M R Mathias
M Todd Gallowglas
Mallory Monroe
Marilou George
Marni Mann
Mary Campisi
Matthew Mather
Melinda Leigh
Melissa Foster
Michael G Manning
Orlando Ramos
Pamela Fagan Hutchins
R J Palacio
Rachel Dover
Rachel Jorgensen
Rebecca Forster
Rebecca Neilsen
Richard Hale
Rick Bylina
Rick Gillispie
Rick Soper
Robert Lee Carey Jr
Robert Pruneda
Rosie Cochran
Ruthie Derby
Ryk Brown
Sandy Wolters
Shaunna Rodriguez
Stacy Eaton
Stephanie Lisa Tara
T R Harris
Tarryn Fisher
Teresa Cypher
Todd Bush
Zach Fortier
Hugh Howey’s Attacks on Serial Novelists
Hugh Howey hired PR teams to create a media frenzy around the fact that he “sold” a million copies of Wool. As we’ve discussed, Howey reached that number through many scams and schemes but the biggest scheme involved him chopping the completed 500-page Wool into 5 pieces and “selling” each separately, with Wool 1 being only about 50 pages.
After Wool, Howey scaled back the scam and it wasn’t until more recent precipitous declines in sales that he returned to the scheme, publishing Sand 1, Sand 2, Sand 3, Sand 4 and Sand 5 in rapid succession before releasing the full work.
Starting with a completed novel, dividing it up into pieces and publishing the pieces significantly inflates Hugh Howey’s numbers. When these pieces are given away and counted as “sold”, they inflate Hugh Howey’s numbers even more.
To date, the pieces have “sold” several million copies, with fully half of the pieces being given away yet counted as “sold”. Meanwhile, actual sales of the full works, are a tiny fraction of the whole.
The scheme though is so lucrative Howey, his fakes and his associates go after anyone releasing serial fiction, even those legitimately releasing serial fiction as they write, as opposed to Howey’s finishing a novel and then chopping it into pieces to inflate sales numbers.
The odd, derogatory reviews that often become personal attacks on serial fiction writers are easy enough to find. Odder still is that you’ll be hard pressed to find any such reviews of Howey’s piece-meal works. What you’ll find instead are the glowing praises of Howey’s fakes and associates.
Help us spread the word about this fraud. Google Hugh Howey Fraud. Tell others.
The Truth Behind the Rise of Wool and Hugh Howey
Our investigation into Hugh Howey continues. “Hugh Howey” self-published his first book as Hugh Howey in 2009. The effort was a complete failure, though highly rated by Howey’s fake accounts and bought mostly by friends and relatives badgered into buying.
With sales in the single digits, Howey kept writing, using his fake accounts to sing his own praises wherever anyone would listen. Despite his fakery and deceptive practices, his zombie fiction and other early works published between 2009 and 2011 remained complete failures. Read by few, with no one but Hugh Howey himself talking about them.
Increasingly bitter and angry, Hugh Howey used his fakes to target other authors, especially ones who seemed successful. In particular, Howey seemed to be set off by anyone talking about their sales or success. Oddly his diatribes were mostly about how the authors were self-published, fakes or frauds, which was strange coming from Howey who was all of those things.
Untangling the webs of Howey’s fakes wasn’t easy and even though we’ve put months into the research we doubt we’ve found even a fraction of the total. One of the most interesting finds was that some of the fake accounts pre-date his first self-publishing efforts.
By 2011, Hugh Howey had completed Wool. Instead of publishing the book as a single work, Howey broke the book into 5 parts: Wool 1, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4 and Wool 5. When Howey self-published Wool 1, pretending as if it was a short story, his deceptive practices and fakery went into over drive. Instead of a few fakes singing his praises, there was a chorus of many. This happened almost as soon as, and in some cases even before, the release of Wool 1.
Wool 1 is about 50 pages. In Wool 1, the so-called sheriff of a post-apocalypse missile-silo town climbs a set of stairs, decides to go outside (which is of course forbidden) where he finds what readers believe is his dead wife. There are no real characters. There’s no real action. There’s not much of anything really. And yet, Howey had his fakes out in mass singing his praises endlessly.
Howey self-published Wool 1, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4 and Wool 5 in rapid succession. Offering each for .99, before making Wool 1 permanently free and creating a so-called Wool omnibus.
Go read the early fake reviews of Wool 1, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4 and Wool 5. They’re hilarious. While you’re reading the fake reviews, note how no one complains about Howey chopping 1 book into 5 parts and just about every fake reviewer talks about the parts as if they are complete works when they’re not.
Conning readers into believing Wool was 5 complete works was part of the hustle. It was the whole reason for the so-called omnibus.
At some sites, Howey listed a page count for individual parts as if the parts were hundreds of pages long. This was another way to con readers into buying what they thought were full-length works.
Here’s where things get even more wacky with Hugh Howey buying his way onto bestseller lists multiple times, as we discussed in earlier postings. Not just that but Howey then hired public relations teams to create media frenzies around Wool.
The linchpin of the PR strategy revolved around how Hugh Howey is the messiah of the new self-publishing movement, how he’s a Kindle superstar who “sold” a million copies of Wool.
Nothing in the PR frenzy Howey manufactures talks about how he chopped 1 book into 5 pieces or how it’s actually the pieces that together “sold” a million copies. Nothing in the PR frenzy talks about how many copies of Wool 1 were counted as “sold” but were really given away as part of Wool 1 being permanently free.
The real numbers tell the real story and for the time they looked something like this:
Wool 1 – 400,000
Wool 2 – 200,000
Wool 3 – 150,000
Wool 4 – 100,000
Wool 5 – 100,000
Wool Omnibus – 45,000
Shift 1 – 80,000
Shift 2 – 60,000
Shift 3 – 40,000
Shift Omnibus – 27,000
It’s hard to determine precisely how many copies of Wool 1 were given away in this time, though based on other books that rose as high in the free rankings it’s easily 2/3 to 3/4 of the “solds”. What you also can tell from these early numbers is a lot of readers were getting sucked in by the fakery and the manufactured PR frenzy, but fewer and fewer readers were continuing with the Wool saga.
If Hugh Howey’s scams and schemes had collapsed under him back then, Zon Alert and Fiverr Report likely wouldn’t have uncovered his fraud. But his fraud continued unchecked and continues still.
Melissa Foster’s Attacks on Other Authors Continue
Since we exposed the truth behind Melissa Foster’s World Literary Café, we’ve been flooded with comments and questions from others who have experienced the same things we discussed. Increasingly, those who came forward expressed deep concern. It was no secret to them that Melissa Foster hid behind the supposed good things she was doing at World Literary Café while secretly lashing out because they too had been victimized by Foster.
Overwhelmingly, those we heard from wished they’d stepped forward long ago and told others about what Melissa Foster and others associated with her had done to them. Having experienced Foster’s viciousness and ruthlessness firsthand though, they were too afraid to say even privately, off the record, much more about what had happened to them. Mostly, it was because they feared further reprisals and retaliation from Melissa Foster and those associated with her, like Hugh Howey.
We got the sense that Foster’s threats weren’t just taking place online and it was these physical confrontations that were most feared. Whether physical confrontations were made by Foster or associates we were unable to confirm.
One person who we’ll call Sandy told us she was once in Melissa Foster’s inner circle and agreed to speak openly as long as we didn’t use her real name. Sandy also told us about threats made against her family. Threats that made her certain she’d stumbled into a criminal organization.
Sandy went on to tell us about various fast-money schemes operated by Melissa Foster and her associates out of World Literary Café. During our investigation into this and related matters, our member bloggers did find the over-priced “writing” and “self-publishing” courses and other paid offerings discussed.
Anyone who joined World Literary Café became a mark to bleed of cash or a target to bash. We were told authors who joined World Literary Café and bought into these paid offerings were left alone, while authors who joined World Literary Café but didn’t buy these offerings were targeted for take down. The goal according to Sandy was to make self-publishers who didn’t buy in feel like they couldn’t do anything right on their own.
According to Sandy, Foster was extremely petty. She used her inner circle and others to go after non-paying authors hard. The sign up process and profiles created by the authors themselves when they joined World Literary Café gave Foster the ammo she needed to do it, as it told Foster all about where they were active on social media, what books they’d published and where, etc.
Sandy said it was a shakedown. While the authors were targeted for harassment on social media and derogatory reviews, Foster was baiting them with smiles, trying to pull them deeper into the spider’s web. World Literary Café was telling them about special offerings that could help them self-publish.
Some, according to Sandy, got the nuclear option, meaning Foster wanted them gone, destroyed, out of the writing business. Sandy wasn’t sure how these were chosen. It seemed just as easily to be those who got on Melissa Foster’s bad side as those who were successful self-publishers that somehow got on Foster’s radar.
All of this struck a nerve with our members, but it was something Sandy said offhanded that struck deepest. It was about how often Foster talked about karma. How Foster believed the bad things someone did would come back, and how the good things someone did offset this.
Sandy said often when Foster was up to no good, Foster would also be on social media spreading positive, uplifting statements. Melissa Foster believed this was the way to ensure the bad things she did didn’t come back on her. It was her way of balancing the negativity caused by her misdeeds.
Needless to say, we were just floored by this. Help us spread the word about this fraud. Google Melissa Foster Fraud. Tell others.
60% of Online Ratings and Reviews Are Fake
From corporate publishers with schemes to create the next Harry Potter by generating avalanches of “support” for authors and books to small-time book hustlers writing their own reviews, the online world is overrun with fraud and fakery. Online review systems are broken and untrustworthy. Amazon’s own internal memos state up to 60% of the reviews on its sites are disgenuine. 60% is a large number but based on our extensive research we believe the actual number is significantly higher.
When we started researching online rating and review fraud, Zon Alert and Fiverr Report bloggers didn’t know what we were getting into. Our initial investigation lead us to criminal crime author Carolyn Arnold and a large cabals of authors committing online fraud by faking ratings and reviews. This investigation lead us in turn to Melissa Foster and an even larger cabals of authors committing not only rating and review fraud but also driving multilevel fraudulent schemes of many types. Frauds that revolved around fake awards, fake fans or street teams, authors buying their way onto bestseller lists, organized efforts to damage the careers of other authors, organized review-for-favor schemes, consumers lured with promises of gifts and gratuities if only they reviewed certain authors’ works, authors swapping reviews with each other like bubble gum, and many other types of organized review-writing schemes.
In our investigations we identified numerous cheating authors and named them in this blog. Caught red-handed the cheating authors tried to discredit this blog and its members. Some outed for hundreds of fake reviews made claims they were innocent as they didn’t have hundreds of reviews at Amazon, knowing full well the scope of their fraud extended to many sites beyond Amazon. Knowing also some, and in cases many, of the fake reviews weren’t used to support their own books but to cause harm to others.
The list of cheats quickly grew to encompass not only authors but also friends and relations who knowingly participated. Our infamous list of badly behaving unethical authors grew to include
A M Hargrove
A Meredith Walters
Aaron Pogue
Alle Wells
Amanda Hocking
Ann Swann
Ashley Fontainne
B V Larson
Bella Forrest
Betty Dravis
Blake Crouch
Brandon Sanderson
C C Cole
Carmen DeSousa
Carolyn Arnold
Cassia Leo
Cege Smith
Cheryl Kaye Tardif
Collette Scott
D A Graystone
D Ryan Leask
Daniel Arenson
David A Wells
Debora Geary
Dixie Goode
E L Lindley
Edie Claire
Elizabeth Reyes
Emma Chase
Erica Stevens
Erin Hunter
Frederick Lee Brooke
Gail McHugh
H M Ward
Hugh Howey
Ilona Andrews
J A Hunsinger
J A Konrath
J S Scott
James Dean
Jasinda Wilder
Jay Allan
Jennifer Chase
Jessica Sorensen
Jillian Dodd
Joanna Lee Doster
K Bromberg
K J Bennett
Karen DeLabar
Karen Vaughan
Kenneth Hoss
Kerry Reis
Kirkus MacGowan
L J Kentowski
Linda Hawley
Linda S Prather
Lorena Angell
M R Mathias
M Todd Gallowglas
Mallory Monroe
Marni Mann
Mary Campisi
Matthew Mather
Melinda Leigh
Melissa Foster
Michael G Manning
Pamela Fagan Hutchins
R J Palacio
Rachel Dover
Rebecca Forster
Richard Hale
Rick Bylina
Rick Soper
Robert Pruneda
Rosie Cochran
Ryk Brown
Sandy Wolters
Stacy Eaton
Stephanie Lisa Tara
T R Harris
Tarryn Fisher
Todd Bush
Zach Fortier
As we kept digging we kept uncovering more and more cheating authors including hustlers like C J Ellisson, Martin Crosbie, A J Cosmo, Samantha Chase, Elle Casey, Jennifer Blake, K D Emerson, Rachel Yu, Michael Yu, Eve Carter, Helen Hanson, Lily Lexington, Michael Baisden, Sharlene Alexander, Monique Martin, Gerald Hawksley, David Dalglish, CC MacKenzie, Rosalind James and Alexia Purdy. Some of which are small-time cheats, while others are huge fraudsters earning tens of thousands a month through deceptive practices, unethical behavior and outright fakery.
Not to mention even bigger cheats: B V Larson, Hugh Howey, H M Ward, John Locke, Melissa Foster, Amanda Hocking, et al.
The research left us disillusioned and angry. We believe the rating and reviews systems are so broken the only way to fix them is for all online ratings and reviews to be removed or for every site to have a widely displayed disclaimer that reader ratings and reviews cannot be relied upon to determine the quality or merchantability of any product. We won’t be holding our breath for such things to happen and you shouldn’t either. Instead, you should report the aforementioned fraudsters wherever their fake reviews appear and demand justice.
The Crazed Racist Rants of Hugh Howey
Hugh Howey has a long history of misogynist rants against women. Some of which have been documented widely online. Slate and others have called him out for his public outbursts against women. Slate in particular said:
After [Hugh Howey] took to his blog and Goodreads to bash one woman he met at last year’s WorldCon, the publishing blogosphere may not have much goodwill left.
The result: fierce backlash from readers and publishers alike over his portrayal of an unnamed female convention attendee, whom he calls “the batshit craziest broad at all of Worldcon.” The rant gets more disturbing from there, devolving into a “fantasy” of grabbing his crotch and telling her, “Suck it, bitch.”
As Hugh Howey tried to back pedal against a huge backlash and outright anger, our friend, a Publishers Weekly employee named Rose Fox saw right through Howey’s bullshit apology. She said:
What he gets wrong: completely missing that this isn’t about the words “bitch” and “broad” but about vast and deep offensive.
Read more about Howey’s misogynist rantings.
In the original posting to his blog, which was later removed due to public outrage and backlash, Hugh Howey tore apart “the bitch from worldcon” whose apparent crime was she didn’t know who Hugh Howey was. Misogyny aside, the posting also revealed Hugh Howey’s sense of entitlement and self-importance.
Slate and everyone else who read “the bitch from worldcon” posting got the sense Howey had deep resentment of women and other deep, possibly psychological issues related to self-identity.
A main point of his outrage was this: How could “anyone” not know who “Hugh Howey” was. It’s not something he said openly, but it was there throughout. It’s also one of the rare times Hugh Howey’s true self made a public appearance along with his galaxy-sized ego.
As when his long history of fraud was outed publicly in this blog by Zon Alert members, Hugh Howey quickly found a way to spin the backlash and get others to go after anyone who dared mention “the bitch from worldcon” posting or any of his other strange rants against women.
Howey immediately claimed he was being bullied. He pleaded publicly for anyone and everyone to help stop his bullies on his blog, on sites like Stop The Goodreads Bullies and anywhere else he could gather support. He begged family, friends, readers, others to write reviews of his books, to keep writing reviews of his books for as long as possible, because his bullies were supposedly writing hateful reviews of his books.
All this should sound familiar to readers of this blog. It’s what Hugh Howey did when we outed him for his fakery.
As before, our extensive research found no credible evidence that anyone ever wrote any hateful reviews of Hugh Howey books because of these incidents or any other. The supposed hateful reviews didn’t exist, or perhaps they only existed in Howey’s broken psyche.
After careful investigation, several of our bloggers were left wondering if the whole thing wasn’t another elaborate publicity stunt by master con artist, Hugh Howey. Our investigation did turn up a pattern of misogynistic behavior and general rants against women. It also lead us to The Misogynist Rantings of Hugh Howey where we found a blogger who connected us with a former Howey co-worker.
The former Howey co-worker had many interesting things to say about Howey’s sometimes lewd and often inappropriate workplace behavior, about Howey’s attitudes toward certain groups, women, non-whites and Jewish people in particular. None of what was said was flattering.
Howey often spent his time at work writing instead of working, leaving co-workers to fill in.
Howey often made offhanded, raunchy comments about women and particular female body parts.
Howey seemed to very much dislike certain types of people, non-whites specifically.
There were lots of inappropriate jokes made by Howey, especially about large women and non-white people.
As far as Howey’s romanticized self-story goes, especially about his supposed yacht captain days, the former co-worker said much of this stretched the truth so far as to be laughable. Howey painted his life through rose-colored glasses so readers would like him. No other reason.
In closing, we’d like to say the integrity of this blog is important to us, as is the quality of our in depth research into these important issues. We publish no reports or commentary without first verifying primary sources and second seeking credible confirmation from additional sources. However, the extreme nature of Hugh Howey’s racist, bigoted comments left us conflicted over whether we should repeat them verbatim in this blog. After lengthy consideration, we decided we did not want to repeat such hurtful, hate-filled rants in this blog.
Investigating Misconduct at Amazon
It’s no secret Amazon staffers play favorites when it comes to books and authors, or that the number of those affiliated with Amazon staffers who have become Kindle stars is excessively high. What’s not so well known are the tactics used to ensure certain books and authors succeed while others fail. While working at Amazon, our former Amazon insider saw these tactics employed firsthand.
Amazon is a company built around a search engine. The same search engine used to find products is used to feature products and control product display. Amazon staffers manipulate many aspects of the search engine every day from selecting which products appear in which features and which products don’t to determining which products are given higher precedence when a customer tries to find a product and which products aren’t.
Our former insider saw it all. Authors who were disliked or complained about issues at Amazon sites were punished. Their books were flagged, removed from features and listings or worse.
Tactics were used to push books of these authors so far down the listings no one would see them. One way to do this was to reset the sales data for the day, the week, the month or entirely. Another way to do this was to flag or remove reviews from an author’s books.
One of the ways B V Larson, Hugh Howey, H M Ward, John Locke, Amanda Hocking and other early Kindle stars got ahead was to associate their books with top professionally published authors. For example, Hugh Howey entered Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan and other top author names as keywords for his Wool books, ensuring the books would be displayed in the search results whenever anyone searched for these top authors and their books. Thus, instead of his Wool books only being displayed in search results a few times a day, the Wool books were being displayed in search results thousands and thousands of times – and in some cases over 100,000 times a day.
The tactic is extremely unethical because customers were unwittingly being redirected from a book or author they were searching for to a book fraudulently inserted into search results. The tactic was so successful that scammers like B V Larson, Hugh Howey, H M Ward, John Locke, Amanda Hocking and other early Kindle stars went from making a few dollars a day on sales to making thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a day. Meanwhile, the sales of the authors these cheats were scamming from went down dramatically.
In a series of secretive meetings between Kindle executives and various Kindle self-publishing stars from Hugh Howey to Amanda Hocking this tactic and others to get ahead of the system were often discussed and shared. Amazon staffers even rewrote the Kindle publishing rules to ban many of the practices discussed, while continuing to allow B V Larson, Hugh Howey, H M Ward, John Locke, Amanda Hocking and other early Kindle stars to use them.
A key reason for this was the anti-trust litigation involving major publishers and Apple. The fact Amazon staffers were actively looking for ways to punish major publishers and their authors. The fact Amazon wanted its Kindle self-publishing program to dominate the market. Thus, Amazon staffers looked the other way and allowed a select group of authors cheat the system, while simultaneously punishing other authors who tried to use the same tactics.
Amazon and Others Purge Thousands of Fake Hugh Howey Ratings and Reviews
We’re pleased that Amazon and other sites have taken action, purging thousands of fake ratings and reviews from Hugh Howey’s books over the past few months. These purges do not go far enough, however. Hugh Howey has perpetrated a massive fraud. A fraud that is likely the largest in the history of publishing. A fraud is so massive and elaborate Hugh Howey makes “A Million Little Pieces” author James Frey look like a beloved saint.
As our reporting of Howey’s fraud grew traction, we noticed many of these early fake accounts began to quietly disappear. 387 disappeared over a two-month period in fact, largely we suspect due to Hugh Howey himself deleting the fake accounts to cover his tracks. To date, nearly a thousand such accounts have quietly disappeared in all. The more recent purges seem to be due to sites like Amazon identifying the fraud we’ve pointed out and taking action. Google Hugh Howey Fraud Zon Alert to see others who have joined our efforts to expose this fraudster.
The fact is Hugh Howey defrauded people the world over. His multilevel scams and schemes go back to his earliest works of Zombie fiction, most of which have been pulled from Amazon and other stores in recent months. Fortunately, Zon Alert researched, analyzed and catalogued every review of those works before Hugh Howey was able to completely cover his tracks.
Based on our analysis, every review of those early works was created using fake accounts. Fake accounts set up for the sole purpose of promoting Hugh Howey. Not only did the fake accounts write multiple reviews of Hugh Howey’s self-published works, they also mentioned Hugh Howey in other reviews they wrote, in Listmania lists, in So You’d Like to guides and on customer discussion forums.
It was from those reviews that we, along with the Amazon insider on our team, were able to track and identify hundreds of similar fake accounts used by Hugh Howey to promote his self-published works and act as his own fan club.
During a period of time from early 2009 to mid 2012, Hugh Howey created fake accounts daily until he had amassed thousands of accounts. To date, Zon Alert has identified over 3,500 accounts created during this time period and used to promote Hugh Howey. Not just at Amazon or Goodreads but at sites across the net. If there is a site where people talk about books Hugh Howey and his fake accounts were there to talk up his books.
These accounts numbering in the thousands pre-date any actual or legitimate following of Wool and yet they were all talking up and promoting Hugh Howey. Point of fact:
Wool 1 was published July 30, 2011
Wool 2 was published Nov 30, 2011
Wool 3 was published Dec 4, 2011
Wool 4 was published Dec 25, 2011
Wool 5 was published Jan 14, 2012
Wool Omnibus was published Jan 25, 2012
And yet fake accounts were talking up Hugh Howey from early 2011 on and the numbers grew until they encompassed nearly all of the fake accounts Hugh Howey set up by December 2011.
The scale of the fraud suggests Hugh Howey didn’t act alone and likely enlisted his wife and others in the scheme. In analyzing the writing styles used, there seems to be a few regular tropes like the teen who doesn’t use proper grammar, the soccer mom whose kids loved it too, the bibliophile who supposedly reads a hundred books a year but has never read anything so great. Underneath the standard tropes though what’s being said is clearly orchestrated, organized and planned. Often it’s the same message, just with slightly different wording, even when what are supposedly a few different people are espousing the virtues of Howey.
Something else we encountered but didn’t understand until recently was how Howey’s fake accounts were used to attack other authors. At first we thought this was just something that happened randomly but as we tracked the accounts and the attacks a larger pattern emerged.
A pattern of reinforcing his self-manufactured negativity was the most involving. Certain accounts were used to write bad reviews of the authors’ books. Others were used to reinforce the negativity. They added negative comments or discussions that were in turn voted up or reinforced by yet more Hugh Howey accounts.
A standard treatment was to use his multiple accounts to write reviews complaining about bad grammar, spelling mistakes and such about how poorly written a book was. Next, he’d use other accounts to make comments or discussions thanking the unhappy reviewers for saving them from buying the book.
Essentially, it was open season on any author who could possibly be considered a Howey competitor and just as often any author Howey seemed to dislike for whatever reason.
It’s time this fraud ended. Google Hugh Howey Fraud Zon Alert and send the results to sites where Hugh Howey continues to operative his scams and schemes.
Writers Beware: Joining World Literary Café May Irreparably Damage Your Career
It’s widely known author Melissa Foster is not a nice person. We’ve alerted readers to her numerous fraudulent practices from fake awards to fake reviews to buying her way onto bestseller lists. Readers of this blog know she is a cheat and a liar who will do and say anything to con others into buying her awful books.
As if the endless flood of tweets and posts about love, helping others and caring from such a truly despicable person weren’t enough, we’ve received disturbing reports about Melissa Foster’s World Literary Café. Apparently a number of authors who joined World Literary Café found themselves suddenly on the receiving end of floods of animosity that could only have one source: Melissa Foster herself.
These authors had one thing in common: They wrote in genres where Foster or Friends of Foster also wrote.
What happened? The authors started receiving odd, hateful reviews. Mostly the reviews were 1 or 2 star reviews filled with vitriol. Largely, these vitriol-filled reviews attacked any of the books strength and lied about the books supposedly needing editing, having bad formatting, blank pages or such. Sometimes the reviews were 3 or 4 stars but were written in such a way as to make readers not want to buy the books. These odd reviews continued and spread until sales of the books were damaged enough to fall out of competition with Foster or Friend of Foster books.
Sound like our least favorite hustler Melissa Foster? Blowing sunshine while secretly lashing out? You know it.
How many authors wrote in? 32 so far. The odd, hateful reviews were the least of it. Melissa Foster and Friends of Foster used their contacts at sites like Amazon and Goodreads to make false claims against the authors that resulted in all sorts of nastiness.
One of the authors who knew a Goodreads employee investigated and was forwarded 4 emails sent to Goodreads by Melissa Foster herself. In the emails, Foster made false claims about how the named authors writing their own reviews, having friends and family write their reviews or such.
Sound familiar? It should. Those fraudulent practices are employed by Melissa Foster and Friends of Foster to ensure their books are continually flooded with favorable reviews.
Does the finger pointing work? Apparently it does. More than half of the authors who were attacked in such ways by Foster and Friends of Foster eventually gave up writing. Others were forced to remove their books from sale.
The authors who wrote in had some words of advice for anyone who might be enticed by the eternal sunshine gushing out of Melissa Foster’s backside. The overwhelming sentiment? Don’t walk away, run. Avoid Foster and Friends of Foster at all costs.
Sickened by this? Take action. Make sure others know about the fraud of Melissa Foster and other cheating authors we’ve exposed here.
Amazon Alert: Your Guide to Unethical Authors 
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