# Does anyone know who is running "Crave Books"?



## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Just wondering if it is legit. http://www.cravebooks.com/


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

You can go to https://whois.icann.org and look it up.


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## SBlake (Mar 23, 2017)

Please post your results. I have them listed as a good place to advertise romance, and while I haven't bought a feature yet, they're on my list for a September promo.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Someone sent me a message saying that "the web site is registered to a guy who doesn't live there (it's a small single family house and no one with his name is associated with it) and to a company name that isn't registered in Florida. The phone number is invalid. It's a Virginia area code but the number itself doesn't exist."

So ... it sounds a little bit sketchy. The domain was registered in 2009, but this is the first I've heard of them.


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2017)

Is it new? It says your book will be featured on their site, but you cannot browse deals on their site?  It says you'll get a Facebook post, but the only Crave Books on Facebook is a blogger. There's also no "about us" or other social media links which is another huge red flag.

Reminds me alot of another business that sounds like crave...


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

I found this FB page, but it is in another language: https://www.facebook.com/CraveBooks/


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

Ah, here is the FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ReadCraveBooks/

It only has 40 likes.


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2017)

C. Gockel said:


> I found this FB page, but it is in another language: https://www.facebook.com/CraveBooks/


This is the one I found. Feels scammy to me. What are they charging to post your title to their 40 likes on FB?


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> This is the one I found. Feels scammy to me. What are they charging to post your title to their 40 likes on FB?


I think $18 for the 10,000+ mailing list. I presume that includes $5 for the boosted FB post.


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## AJC (Feb 17, 2014)

I got an email from them which concerns me as I have never signed up to receive emails from them (as far as I'm aware). So how did they get it?


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## Raquel Lyon (Mar 3, 2012)

AJC said:


> I got an email from them which concerns me as I have never signed up to receive emails from them (as far as I'm aware). So how did they get it?


Ditto.


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## jrwilson (Apr 7, 2015)

I just got an email from them too.  Weird.


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## AlexaGrave (Jun 11, 2015)

I got an email from them today, too. And to an old email address that is no longer active (domain folded, but they set up perma-forwarding).


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> Reason #8745 to be anonymous on writing forums: Random spammers can't find you to make you a recipient of their invitations.


If they are scrubbing websites for email addresses they are not a legitimate business. I got an email today too and reported it as spam.

Also, the email sucked donkey balls. The pictures were all blown up and distorted.


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## SBlake (Mar 23, 2017)

I have Crave Romance listed as a Fiverr deal. Is that right?


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

C. Gockel said:


> I think $18 for the 10,000+ mailing list. I presume that includes $5 for the boosted FB post.


They are more expensive than Bookbub. Sounds crazy to say that given what Bookbub charges, but when you do the math, it's vastly more expensive. With this pricing, if they had the same size list as Bookbub--take contemporary romance as an example, the ad would cost you $4,248, instead of Bookbub's price of $372 on a free ad. Interesting, huh? Bookbub's cost, if you emailed to only 10,000 on the contemporary list (not possible, but just for comparison), would cost you $1.57 and this service charges $18.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> They are more expensive than Bookbub. Sounds crazy to say that given what Bookbub charges, but when you do the math, it's vastly more expensive. With this pricing, if they had the same size list as Bookbub--take contemporary romance as an example, the ad would cost you $4,248, instead of Bookbub's price of $372 on a free ad. Interesting, huh? Bookbub's cost, if you emailed to only 10,000 on the contemporary list (not possible, but just for comparison), would cost you $1.57 and this service charges $18.


Yeah, and BookBub's email addresses are more likely to be authentic.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> I have Crave Romance listed as a Fiverr deal. Is that right?


No idea ... maybe they reach people there too.


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2017)

PamelaKelley said:


> They are more expensive than Bookbub. Sounds crazy to say that given what Bookbub charges, but when you do the math, it's vastly more expensive. With this pricing, if they had the same size list as Bookbub--take contemporary romance as an example, the ad would cost you $4,248, instead of Bookbub's price of $372 on a free ad. Interesting, huh? Bookbub's cost, if you emailed to only 10,000 on the contemporary list (not possible, but just for comparison), would cost you $1.57 and this service charges $18.


That's not really a fair comparison though. Run those same numbers with ANY ebook advertising service and it comes out looking just as lopsided. Bookbud is just a really good deal.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

I got an email from them also. They must be scraping emails from somewhere. If that is your newsletter blast then I see a red flag. Sending an email to a another book promo company isn't a great business plan.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> From most of the actual profit numbers I've seen, it's not that Bookbub is a really good deal, it's that almost every other service is a bad deal.


Nah, BookBub is a really good deal.


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## Incognita (Apr 3, 2011)




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## Guest (Aug 4, 2017)

ChristinePope said:


> I got an email out of the blue from them, too. Someone should really let them know that scraping addresses and sending unsolicited emails is not a good way to create a good impression for the product they're selling. :-/


And yet I signed up as a reader yesterday and got nothing! There's no double opt in, no welcome email, no previous day's deals, no information about setting your genre preferences. So make of that what you will...


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## AJC (Feb 17, 2014)

RBN said:


> Took me 5 seconds to find an email address on your web site.
> 
> Reason #8745 to be anonymous on writing forums: Random spammers can't find you to make you a recipient of their invitations.


But the email was to my private email address. Not my author one.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I also got an email from them. They're clearly scraping addresses from somewhere and emailing without permission.


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## AJC (Feb 17, 2014)

Got another email from them today. Yesterday was inviting me to advertise, today it's my 'daily book bargains' - that I didn't ask for, nor do I want. The email looks exactly like a BB email. Spam report sent. 

I get that it's hard setting up a promo site, I'm doing the same, but I wouldn't dream, not for a second, of randomly emailing people who haven't asked to hear from me.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I made sure to report them as spam when I unsubscribed. Scammy bastards.


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

Got my 'reader' one today.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I'm getting their emails now advertising fiction and non-fiction. Emails look professional. I clicked on one of the links and it takes you to the books page on their site. You then have to click on another button to be taken to Amazon. I checked up on a non-fiction book for .99 and it is around 20K overall in Amazon and between 2-60 in 3 categories. Not bad. But I have no idea if the author just advertised with BookCrave or with a variety of other promo sites as well.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I know who is behind this site... BOOKZIO.

I create burner emails with every signup so that if I start getting spam, I can delete the email and see who abused my email. Crave Books started emailing me using BookZio burner email.


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## Bookzio.com (Sep 29, 2016)

Hello,



Marseille said:


> I know who is behind this site... BOOKZIO.
> 
> I create burner emails with every signup so that if I start getting spam, I can delete the email and see who abused my email. Crave Books started emailing me using BookZio burner email.





Perry Constantine said:


> Thanks, I've now unsubscribed from them and reported all the emails I've gotten from them as spam.


I have no idea how your emails were shared - but I can guarantee you, that Bookzio had nothing to do with it. And it rather saddens me to see such a claim here.

My name is Philip Eliot and I am the owner of Bookzio.com (and marketing director) and would just like to make it clear that until this thread was brought to my attention I had never heard of Crave Books.

I would also like to make it clear that Bookzio has never shared email details with anyone.

When a reader subscribes to Bookzio, your email is sent directly to a highly reputable email service - Mailchimp - and you can read their security features here: 
https://mailchimp.com/about/security/

And their 'Acceptable Use Policy' here (which we adhere to):
https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/

The Bookzio website does not, at any time, collect or store email addresses, or contact details of any kind. Your email is collected and saved at Mailchimp, and if you choose to unsubscribe, you do so via Mailchimp. They are experts in the field of email delivery and security and we leave it entirely to them.

There is nowhere on our website or server where an email can be scraped or otherwise stolen. Because we don't store them. Mailchimp stores them, and - quite rightly - enforces all regulatory limitations on how those emails can be used.

Anyone who has ever subscribed to our daily newsletter knows that they get exactly what they signed up for - one daily email list of books on offer. We don't put adverts in the email. We don't send additional emails (except one day last Easter when a newsletter was sent with broken links! And we had to send it again with the links fixed.) You never get anything from Bookzio that you haven't signed up for. You don't even see ads on our website - just books.

If you write directly to us, using our gmail support email, then we answer you in a timely manner but do no more than that.

Bookzio.com is a 'real' business. We are more than a website. We are a small team of booklovers who live and breathe books, and spend our time thinking about how we can improve our service to our readers and authors - many of whom have written to tell us how much they appreciate our work. You can read some of our author testimonials here:
http://www.bookzio.com/promote-your-book

We are real people, here at Bookzio. We're not website hobbyists, or email scrapers or fly-by-nights. And believe it or not, we're not 'in it for the money' or any kind of short-term gain. We happen to love books, and reading. We love to help readers find great books, and help authors find readers.

I understand the skepticism that many people have when it comes to the online world. Websites are faceless properties. And sometimes it's difficult to tell which is a serious business, run by adults, dedicated to what they are doing, and which is just some automated script, running 24/7, set up by some guy in his underpants working on a laptop in his mother's basement. I can assure you - we are not the lattter!

It would be an act of absolute idiocy and self-destruction for Bookzio, as a living, breathing, book business, to do something as foolish as to share subscriber emails with anyone. We've been in business since 2014, and have slowly, but surely, grown to a subscriber list of 20,000+ readers, listing over 30 books every day in our newsletter. Over 10,000 different authors have had their books listed by us. And we're proud of our work - and our reputation.

I'm sorry you guys are getting spammed by some devious, short-term-minded individual/s - unfortunately, the internet world has more than its fair share of those: but I promise you it has nothing to do with me or anyone at Bookzio.com


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## Word Fan (Apr 15, 2015)

Perry Constantine said:


> Thanks, I've now unsubscribed from them and reported all the emails I've gotten from them as spam.


It's way too easy to jump on the condemnation bandwagon based upon incomplete information from the Internet. J.K. Rowling did it recently about Donald Trump but was then gracious enough to apologize when she discovered that she and many, many others were way wrong.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

There is no doubt my Bookzio email was used. I only assigned that email to Bookzio. So if they did not intentionally share the emails personally, then they need to look into how they got ahold of their user's emails. It's apparent that more than one list was used, as not everyone has signed up for Bookzio.

But, their email list is apparently not secure. Otherwise, how else could Crave Books of gotten my specific "Bookzio" email address? I create these burner emails specifically so I can track back who sold my email address, or who is spamming me. I can then simply "delete" that forwarder/burner email and not bother with unsubscribing.

I looked up that email address, and Bookzio was the company assigned to it.

SEE BELOW:











Bookzio.com said:


> Hello,
> 
> I have no idea how your emails were shared - but I can guarantee you, that Bookzio had nothing to do with it. And it rather saddens me to see such a claim here.
> 
> ...


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Word Fan said:


> It's way too easy to jump on the condemnation bandwagon based upon incomplete information from the Internet. J.K. Rowling did it recently about Donald Trump but was then gracious enough to apologize when she discovered that she and many, many others were way wrong.


I've spoken with Philip directly and apologized for my mistake. He graciously accepted. We're good.


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## CraveBooks.com (Aug 13, 2017)

All, I will try to help clarify the situation.  My project manager for Crave Books has brought this thread to my attention and I want to first apologies for any spam type issues that might be causing grief.

Between Phillips post above and the information below I hope this helps to clear the air. My name is Cary Bergeron and my company developed Bookzio and Crave Books.  Among other things, we build income websites/businesses for investors and people interested in turn-key businesses.  

I know Phillip personally and he has been running Bookzio since 2016 and is doing an exceptional job with it.

Crave Books started as a site for a client earlier this year.  I had a project manager working on it along with the client and a development team in India.  This continued until early May when the PM left and went to work for the client unexpectedly.  Not the best of situations but these things happen.  

Crave Books launched in early August and within a couple days we know something was a little off.  We received emails from authors mentioning spam email and then my team alerted me of this thread as well.  I've been personally investigating this matter for the last week and have found out what happened. 

During development of CraveBooks.com a very similar book submission form was used.  This is a Gravity Forms plugin and a well know product in the WordPress community.  To save time, this form was copied from an old database of Bookzio.com by our developer.  Author emails that were collected from 2015 and into 2016 ended up in this new form database and then later merged with our ongoing list building efforts as development progressed.

From what we can tell there where just under 200 author emails affected by this.  We have since removed as many of these emails as possible and will also alert our current list on our next email blast as well.  Since May we have been building both reader and author lists with landing pages, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, giveaways, chatbots and other legitimate sources.  All emails go into the MailChimp.com system and are 100% compliant/secure to their terms of service.

We run 32 active lists in our MailChimp account and in there we have several PM's, two developers and a VA.  I should have been watching the initial development process a little closer but I wasn't, for that I take responsibility.  We are putting a better process in place to double check development tasks.

I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused and if there is anyone who has additional questions they can PM me directly or post here.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

CraveBooks.com said:


> All, I will try to help clarify the situation. My project manager for Crave Books has brought this thread to my attention and I want to first apologies for any spam type issues that might be causing grief.
> 
> Between Phillips post above and the information below I hope this helps to clear the air. My name is Cary Bergeron and my company developed Bookzio and Crave Books. Among other things, we build income websites/businesses for investors and people interested in turn-key businesses.
> 
> ...


I've copied forms using Gravity Form from one site to another and it didn't affect anything with subscribers to the original form.

Furthermore, if Phillip is the owner of Bookzio, why is your company still accessing his property (meaning Bookzio's subscriber list)? If he bought the start-up from your company, doesn't Phillip own it?

FYI, I signed up w/Bookzio for a free run of my freebie, which I see is listed today. Curious to see how it turns out.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

Interesting. Bookzio owner has been PMing me saying I was the only one with this issue and wondered why I used a burner email. Perhaps he didn't know this I suggested he move on from cross-examining me and look into why this happened.



CraveBooks.com said:


> All, I will try to help clarify the situation. My project manager for Crave Books has brought this thread to my attention and I want to first apologies for any spam type issues that might be causing grief.
> 
> Between Phillips post above and the information below I hope this helps to clear the air. My name is Cary Bergeron and my company developed Bookzio and Crave Books. Among other things, we build income websites/businesses for investors and people interested in turn-key businesses.
> 
> ...


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Marseille said:


> Interesting. Bookzio owner has been PMing me saying I was the only one with this issue and wondered why I used a burner email. Perhaps he didn't know this I suggested he move on from cross-examining me and look into why this happened.


Agree. I'd want to know how that list is being shared, not focusing on the consumer who brought it to my attention.

Bergeron says it was 200 authors collected between 2015 and 2016 that were copied to Crave Books. When did you sign up for Bookzio, Patrice? You received the email this month from Crave Books; Bergeron says Eliot has been running Bookzio since 2016. Where did the other 199 authors between 2015-2016 come from? While it's certainly reasonable to sell a business along with the assets of that business (such as a subscriber list), if that same subscriber list is being sold to multiple start-ups, then that is a problem.

If Philip Eliot is the actual owner of the website/business Bookzio (as he said he is earlier in the thread), then why does Cary Bergeron's company (and a development team in India) have access to Bookzio's subscriber lists? And if Bergeron's company somehow accidentally copied Bookzio's subscriber list over to another start-up business they then sold (Crave Books), how many other start-ups have they built and sold with those same subscriber lists?

I love the idea of a burner email. Fabulous.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> If Philip Eliot is the actual owner of the website/business Bookzio (as he said he is earlier in the thread), then why does Cary Bergeron's company (and a development team in India) have access to Bookzio's subscriber lists? And if Bergeron's company somehow accidentally copied Bookzio's subscriber list over to another start-up business they then sold (Crave Books), how many other start-ups have they built and sold with those same subscriber lists?


We don't know that they do have access. Access to backups of the database and files related to Crave Books would be enough to piece together what happened and to see who the earliest 200 subscribers were. If a dev copied over the contents of bookzio to a new add-on domain as a template for Crave Books without editing relevant config files, then both sites would be using the same database for subscribers. Each one would appear to be working correctly when tested with a test sub, but obviously it would lead to people getting unasked-for emails. Even if bookzio was moved to a different host, the problem would persist with those early subscribers to either site. However, I don't think it is a bad sign if they still did have access to bookzio. The bookzio owners are allowed to hire people to help with their site and/or list, including the people who built it in the first place. Nothing nefarious about that, IMHO.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Nathan Elliott said:


> We don't know that they do have access. Access to backups of the database and files related to Crave Books would be enough to piece together what happened and to see who the earliest 200 subscribers were. If a dev copied over the contents of bookzio to a new add-on domain as a template for Crave Books without editing relevant config files, then both sites would be using the same database for subscribers. Each one would appear to be working correctly when tested with a test sub, but obviously it would lead to people getting unasked-for emails. Even if bookzio was moved to a different host, the problem would persist with those early subscribers to either site. However, I don't think it is a bad sign if they still did have access to bookzio. The bookzio owners are allowed to hire people to help with their site and/or list, including the people who built it in the first place. Nothing nefarious about that, IMHO.


If Patrice signed up to Bookzio with a burner email, then received an email to that burner address from Crave Books, then someone has access to Bookzio's subscribers. Bookzio was created as a start-up website/business by Bergeron's company and transferred/sold/taken over by Eliot in 2016. Bergeron's company later transferred/sold another start-up website/business to Crave Books this August. Somehow, Crave Books is in possession of Bookzio's subscriber list.

If both sites are funneling to the same Mail Chimp database because of some form copying error on Bergeron's part, that is an issue that Bookzio would likely want to rectify. As for a developer having access to Bookzio for ongoing management, sure, they may very well have some sort of working agreement, however Eliot clearly already stated that no one else has access to Bookzio's MailChimp list. If Bookzio is working with Bergeron, that that still bears the question of how Bookzio's subscribers were given to an entirely different business, in this case, Crave Books.



Bookzio.com said:


> My name is Philip Eliot and I am the owner of Bookzio.com (and marketing director) and would just like to make it clear that until this thread was brought to my attention I had never heard of Crave Books.
> 
> I would also like to make it clear that Bookzio has never shared email details with anyone.
> 
> ...


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I believe my first signup was in 2016? get your burner email from Blur/Abine. I use Chrome App.



ebbrown said:


> Agree. I'd want to know how that list is being shared, not focusing on the consumer who brought it to my attention.
> 
> Bergeron says it was 200 authors collected between 2015 and 2016 that were copied to Crave Books. When did you sign up for Bookzio, Patrice? You received the email this month from Crave Books; Bergeron says Eliot has been running Bookzio since 2016. Where did the other 199 authors between 2015-2016 come from? While it's certainly reasonable to sell a business along with the assets of that business (such as a subscriber list), if that same subscriber list is being sold to multiple start-ups, then that is a problem.
> 
> ...


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## CraveBooks.com (Aug 13, 2017)

WOW...this is getting good. No conspiracy going on here, I promise.

These are two separate sites/entities and nothing malicious is happening. A simple mistake/error while a site was being developed and came online.



ebbrown said:


> Furthermore, if Phillip is the owner of Bookzio, why is your company still accessing his property (meaning Bookzio's subscriber list)? If he bought the start-up from your company, doesn't Phillip own it?


We are not accessing his property and yes he owns it.



ebbrown said:


> Bergeron says it was 200 authors collected between 2015 and 2016 that were copied to Crave Books. When did you sign up for Bookzio, Patrice? You received the email this month from Crave Books; Bergeron says Eliot has been running Bookzio since 2016. Where did the other 199 authors between 2015-2016 come from? While it's certainly reasonable to sell a business along with the assets of that business (such as a subscriber list), if that same subscriber list is being sold to multiple start-ups, then that is a problem.
> 
> If Philip Eliot is the actual owner of the website/business Bookzio (as he said he is earlier in the thread), then why does Cary Bergeron's company (and a development team in India) have access to Bookzio's subscriber lists? And if Bergeron's company somehow accidentally copied Bookzio's subscriber list over to another start-up business they then sold (Crave Books), how many other start-ups have they built and sold with those same subscriber lists?


Yes the email came out this week, but the emails in question are from years ago. The list was on the initial site back before Phillip took ownership, they where not scraped or stolen. They where sign ups on Bookzio back in the day. The subscriber list is not being resold, that is not what happened here.

Philip is the owner and we don't have access to any of their lists, sites or any accounts and haven't since about Sept/Oct of last year. The developer had an old copy of the site in their dev environment. This is not unheard of for various reasons. Has it been active on the dev server the entire time? Or, did they do a restore and then use parts of their development for a new site? This I don't know but I could find out if you like. I was told they used the forms portion to shortener the development time. They are honest and I didn't question.

We have not built and sold any start-ups using previous email lists.



ebbrown said:


> If Patrice signed up to Bookzio with a burner email, then received an email to that burner address from Crave Books, then someone has access to Bookzio's subscribers. Bookzio was created as a start-up website/business by Bergeron's company and transferred/sold/taken over by Eliot in 2016. Bergeron's company later transferred/sold another start-up website/business to Crave Books this August. Somehow, Crave Books is in possession of Bookzio's subscriber list.
> 
> If both sites are funneling to the same Mail Chimp database because of some form copying error on Bergeron's part, that is an issue that Bookzio would likely want to rectify. As for a developer having access to Bookzio for ongoing management, sure, they may very well have some sort of working agreement, however Eliot clearly already stated that no one else has access to Bookzio's MailChimp list. If Bookzio is working with Bergeron, that that still bears the question of how Bookzio's subscribers were given to an entirely different business, in this case, Crave Books.


This entire thought is incorrect. Aside from the small list of emails from an old development site almost two years ago these two sites/lists are 100% stand alone and do not share anything. The dev environments are separate, the MailChimp accounts are separate and they are 100% independent of each other.

I don't really know what else I can say.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

CraveBooks.com said:


> WOW...this is getting good. No conspiracy going on here, I promise.
> 
> These are two separate sites/entities and nothing malicious is happening. A simple mistake/error while a site was being developed and came online.
> We are not accessing his property and yes he owns it.
> ...


Subscribers from a start-up that you built, Bookzio, were somehow transferred to Crave Books, another start-up you built. That is the issue. The current owner, Philip, states that no one has access to Bookzio's subscriber list. Since it is clear that Patrice *only* provided her email to Bookzio, and then Crave Books somehow came in possession of it, something is not kosher at some point. It is reasonable to wonder how many other start-ups you sold are in possession of subscribers that did not sign up for their service. You can talk around it all you want and explain it away every day til Tuesday, but the fact remains the same.

*Patrice used a burner email to sign up for Bookzio. Crave Books came in possession of that email. *

[quote author=CraveBooks.com]During development of CraveBooks.com a very similar book submission form was used. This is a Gravity Forms plugin and a well know product in the WordPress community. To save time, this form was copied from an old database of Bookzio.com by our developer. Author emails that were collected from 2015 and into 2016 ended up in this new form database and then later merged with our ongoing list building efforts as development progressed.[/quote]
So when you developed Crave Books, you're saying you used the merged database of subscribers that you collected in 2015 and 2016 for other start-ups you developed and sold, such as Bookzio?

[quote author=CraveBooks.com]Yes the email came out this week, but the emails in question are from years ago. The list was on the initial site back before Phillip took ownership, they where not scraped or stolen. They where sign ups on Bookzio back in the day.[/quote] Readers signed up for Bookzio emails. So why does Crave Books have possession of Bookzio's subscribers?

[quote author=CraveBooks.com]We have not built and sold any start-ups using previous email lists.[/quote] You said that you copied an old database from Bookzio to create Crave Books, and that's how Bookzio 200 subscribers from 2015-2016 ended up with Crave Books. *That is the definition of building a start-up and using previous email lists*. As it is unclear if you are the owner of Crave Books or not, as you mentioned you built it for a client but then also seem to be currently running it, that is not clear.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

I could have signed up in 2015, but don't know for sure as I deleted the emails associated with these lists. Either case, it was 2015 or 2016.


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## CraveBooks.com (Aug 13, 2017)

I understand the concerns voiced above.  If anyone is uncomfortable using the CraveBooks.com service you are completely entitled to that.  You can exercise your free market rights and not use it.

I've tried my best to help explain what I know.  At this point I can't continue to check in with this thread and post daily updates.  I hope everyone will understand that.

Philip and Bookzio.com are 100% a legitimate business and he is doing everything he can to help Indie authors succeed.

The sites my company creates are completely legit and above the board as well.  We intend to hold this site in our portfolio and the results will speak for themselves.  Do small issues come up when creating something awesome, yes they do.  When you have as much going on as I do things sometimes get overlooked.  For this I already apologized above.

If my company was doing something "sneaky" or underhanded I would have never replied to this thread.  I didn't come here to argue, but to right something that went wrong.  Philip and what he is doing should be commended for helping establish up and coming authors.  CraveBooks.com will also be helping authors more and more over the coming months.  If you don't choose to use our services that is your choice.

I'll end with saying at this point I consider my part in this thread closed.  PM's and emails sent to [email protected] will still be answered.


----------



## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

CraveBooks.com said:


> I understand the concerns voiced above. If anyone is uncomfortable using the CraveBooks.com service you are completely entitled to that. You can exercise your free market rights and not use it.
> 
> I've tried my best to help explain what I know. At this point I can't continue to check in with this thread and post daily updates. I hope everyone will understand that.
> 
> ...


An explanation of how a subscriber email is shared is not a "small issue", according to CAN SPAM laws, and it's a vitally important issue to authors in this industry. Subscriber emails being shared or accessed, no matter how innocently one might portray it, is a serious concern to both authors and readers.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Where in the CAN-SPAM Act does it address sharing email lists? I am not a lawyer. That said, I think you are mistaken about the CAN-SPAM Act if you believe it's been violated here. I've read the law, and to my layperson's eye, it looks legal to send unsolicited emails and to get the address list from anywhere you please. Plenty of legitimate companies do it. But it *is* illegal to not honor unsub requests or to not give correct address info, etc. Nobody has provided any evidence that anyone at Bookzio or Crave Books has violated the law. Something mildly annoying but apparently legal happened and was pointed out. Crave Books has provided a plausible (to me) explanation of what went wrong, which fully explains what happened to get the burner address onto the list. They didn't deny the problem. They explained it and took responsibility. Reasonable people can disagree on the severity of it, but I don't see it as a huge deal.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Where in the CAN-SPAM Act does it address sharing email lists? I am not a lawyer. That said, I think you are mistaken about the CAN-SPAM Act if you believe it's been violated here. I've read the law, and to my layperson's eye, it looks legal to send unsolicited emails and to get the address list from anywhere you please. Plenty of legitimate companies do it. But it *is* illegal to not honor unsub requests or to not give correct address info, etc. Nobody has provided any evidence that anyone at Bookzio or Crave Books has violated the law. Something mildly annoying but apparently legal happened and was pointed out. Crave Books has provided a plausible (to me) explanation of what went wrong, which fully explains what happened to get the burner address onto the list. They didn't deny the problem. They explained it and took responsibility. Reasonable people can disagree on the severity of it, but I don't see it as a huge deal.


So you're okay with your subscriber list being given to another business? Tell that to your subscribers who think it's a big deal. As a consumer, I absolutely think it's a big friggin deal. If I sign up for your list, I'm not signing up for every tom dick and harry you or your developer want to share it with. If you think it's perfectly fine, then advise your subscribers in big bold print that their emails will be shared to other services they did not sign up to. Make it CLEAR to your subscribers that you're absolutely fine with that - and let them decide if they want to risk giving you their contact info. 
The fact that you are defending a developer who shared your subscribers with another service is telling enough as it is. Good luck with that, and subscribers beware.
Peace out, yo! &#128514;


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

I got there emails to 3 email addresses. I never heard of them and never signed up with them. So if they are scrapping or stealing or somehow otherwise acquiring email addresses and have on their site they have xxxxxxx number of subscribers they are lying. As they pop up in my email they are getting reported as spam. And as someone else pointed out - the emails were horrible - the covers were huge and distorted. Now I don't look, I just click the unsub and report as spam. They make all book promo sites look bad.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

nightfire said:


> I got there emails to 3 email addresses. I never heard of them and never signed up with them. So if they are scrapping or stealing or somehow otherwise acquiring email addresses and have on their site they have xxxxxxx number of subscribers they are lying. As they pop up in my email they are getting reported as spam. And as someone else pointed out - the emails were horrible - the covers were huge and distorted. Now I don't look, I just click the unsub and report as spam. They make all book promo sites look bad.


Okay, that may be different. Would you be willing to say anything about where these addresses were used in the past? I'm guessing you didn't sign up for Bookzio? Are any of these addresses new ones that would not have existed last year?


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Okay, that may be different. Would you be willing to say anything about where these addresses were used in the past? I'm guessing you didn't sign up for Bookzio? Are any of these addresses new ones that would not have existed last year?


I have a lot of email addresses. I use different ones for different things. I may have signed up for BookZio at some point with one, but I have long since unsubbed. The others were used at other book promo sites at one time or another. They are all attached to websites. They are all "old". He bought lists or scrapped website whois or is stealing from other companies. And I use Gravity Forms extensively and that explanation is BS. If he copied a form you don't get email addresses. He had to EXPORT entries to get email addresses.

Any way you look at it his initial email lists were not opt in at all. Not the way to start a company.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Thank you for the information.  That's too bad.


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## Bookzio.com (Sep 29, 2016)

I am on holiday at present so I haven't been monitoring this forum closely, and I feel I made my position as clear as possible in my earlier post.

But I was formerly unaware of the details which Cary presents in this thread and I will be discussing them with him privately.

I was glad to become the new owner of Bookzio.com back in October 2016, and since then my small team of booklovers have increased the number of books that appear in the newsletter each day, and increased the number, variety and quality of books that appear on our site, and newsletter - as well as increased the number of subscribers and visitors to our site each month. Our Social Media accounts have added tens of thousands of followers and our engagement rates have increased immensely. We have added numerous glowing testimonials from happy authors and we have received numerous emails from subscribers telling us how much they enjoy our service and our 'human touch'. I have invested substantially in our administration area, which allows us to work quicker and more accurately - which, in turn, increases the quality of our service and delivery. Google is now recognizing us as an 'authority' in the book-market and Bookzio.com is now appearing in many search engine results for competitive book-related searches. We have great plans for the future, which will be slowly rolled out over the coming months. Last Easter, we subscribed to Sucuri who are one of the top reviewed website security solutions on the internet, to ensure that anyone who visits our site is well-protected. The name 'Bookzio' has come to represent quality and good service to many.

As I understand it, the issues raised here go back to the previous ownership: therefore the assurances I made in my earlier message, regarding email security, are sincere, and remain valid.

If anyone has any concerns whatsoever, please visit Bookzio.com and use the contact form - we are known to respond (helpfully) within hours.

Finally, I simply do not think it is appropriate to discuss these matters in a public forum. And I do wish they had been brought to me first. But now, please allow us to deal with these matters in private, without additional comments here.

Thank you to those who have stepped up in support of Bookzio.

Philip Eliot and the Bookzio team


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

It is completely appropriate to discuss here. That's what we do here - discuss issues that affect our industry. How subscriber lists are handled by businesses is a very big deal. Those who use practices like scrapping emails & buying/sharing lists make it that much more difficult for authors who do things responsibly. 
It would be beneficial for Philip to update this thread once the issue is resolved.



nightfire said:


> I have a lot of email addresses. I use different ones for different things. I may have signed up for BookZio at some point with one, but I have long since unsubbed. The others were used at other book promo sites at one time or another. They are all attached to websites. They are all "old". He bought lists or scrapped website whois or is stealing from other companies. And I use Gravity Forms extensively and that explanation is BS. If he copied a form you don't get email addresses. He had to EXPORT entries to get email addresses.
> 
> Any way you look at it his initial email lists were not opt in at all. Not the way to start a company.


Yes. The developer's explanation doesn't fly. I've copied plenty of forms with GF and never accidentally transferred subscribers somewhere else. Importing/exporting subscriber lists or moving subscribers from one list to another in Mail Chimp is a deliberate act. It doesn't matter how many lists you are managing in one Mail Chimp account, they all work the same.

Those subscribers who signed up for Bookzio before Philip purchased it shouldn't have been retained by the developer. The fact that the subscribers were retained and then distributed to another company is not some insignificant mistake; subscribers have every right to question how many other times their info was given to other start-ups sold/operated by that developer.


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## josielitton (Jul 21, 2014)

Bookzio.com said:


> ...Finally, I simply do not think it is appropriate to discuss these matters in a public forum: Please allow us to deal with these matters in private, without additional comments here.
> 
> Thank you to those who have stepped up in support of Bookzio.
> 
> Philip Eliot and the Bookzio team


You don't need for us to "allow" you to deal with this privately without further comment here. That's entirely up to you. However, I hope you're not saying that the rest of us should stop discussing this matter. The issue of wrongful appropriation of email lists is very serious and merits a thorough airing. To ask for discussion to end would be extraordinarily presumptuous and a real red flag.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

> The issue of wrongful appropriation of email lists is very serious and merits a thorough airing. To ask for discussion to end would be extraordinarily presumptuous and a real red flag.


Um, yeah. This is a big deal. I understand if mistakes were made, that happens! But be honest about it.


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## JulianneQJohnson (Nov 12, 2016)

Bookzio.com said:


> Finally, I simply do not think it is appropriate to discuss these matters in a public forum. And I do wish they had been brought to me first. But now, please allow us to deal with these matters in private, without additional comments here.
> 
> Thank you to those who have stepped up in support of Bookzio.
> 
> Philip Eliot and the Bookzio team


I believe that your heart is in the right place and that you have implemented good business practices since you took over Bookzio. That is completely to your credit. From what folks have said in this forum, whatever happened, it happened before you purchased the business. I have no dog in this show, but from your polite and informative responses, I have come out with a positive view of your company, to the extent that I am considering using your services. You've handled the situation with a little grace and patience, and that will do much to help your business.

That said, folks will continue to discuss this. It's not only likely, it's necessary. We are predominately Indie writers. We have no big 5 publisher to look out for our interests. We must be the watchdogs for each other, so it is standard procedure for writers to bring up anything that might seem fishy and discuss it in a public forum.

You have handled the situation well and I am living proof that an average reader of this thread is not judging your service negatively. I've gone from not having heard of your service to considering using it.

If I were you, I'd let it go. You've said what you needed to say and represented your company well.


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## AlexaGrave (Jun 11, 2015)

I can pretty much attest that wherever the emails were nabbed from, it was from an older list. So definitely most likely a previous owner. The email that I'd received from Crave Books was to an old defunct address. I am a BookZio subscriber (and I've used their free service for short stories a couple times, happily), and I changed my email on my subscription back in January. So that list had to be older to have gotten that old email address.

I honestly feel bad for whatever client Crave Books is being created for, since it really looks like that the unsavory stuff might be happening with the company who starts these ventures up, and then that negativity will follow on to the new owner. I know there have been posts here from "Crave Books" but it implies that it's really another company building the site. I wonder which company that might be.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

I think it is important to keep the thread up as authors sharing information is what kboards is all about.

However, I weirdly got an email from Crave Books just yesterday. So I went through my junked email and I have several of them. To my knowledge I've never signed up with them. It is probably important to mention that I also have never signed up with Bookzio, so wherever Crave books got my email it wasn't Bookzio.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> At this point I can't continue to check in with this thread and post daily updates. I hope everyone will understand that.


Well, that's up to you. It's your business. But this forum is well-known for it's vetting and discussions about various businesses, many of whom have been found to be doing something hinky that could harm indies. Amazon holds us responsible for the services we use, and our accounts are at risk when things go wrong. So, we keep talking. And learning.

So I hope you and the other guy can understand that.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

[quote author=AlexaGrave.]

I honestly feel bad for whatever client Crave Books is being created for, since it really looks like that the unsavory stuff might be happening with the company who starts these ventures up, and then that negativity will follow on to the new owner. I know there have been posts here from "Crave Books" but it implies that it's really another company building the site. I wonder which company that might be. 
[/quote]

&#128077;&#128077;


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## Helen_Christian (Jan 17, 2017)

I too have been getting Crave emails to a number of email addresses that I certainly didn't sign up for.
I definitely will not be using them and find the site builder's lack of professionalism appalling.


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## Jill Nojack (Mar 7, 2014)

Nathan Elliott said:


> Where in the CAN-SPAM Act does it address sharing email lists? I am not a lawyer. That said, I think you are mistaken about the CAN-SPAM Act if you believe it's been violated here. I've read the law, and to my layperson's eye, it looks legal to send unsolicited emails and to get the address list from anywhere you please. Plenty of legitimate companies do it. But it *is* illegal to not honor unsub requests or to not give correct address info, etc. Nobody has provided any evidence that anyone at Bookzio or Crave Books has violated the law. Something mildly annoying but apparently legal happened and was pointed out. Crave Books has provided a plausible (to me) explanation of what went wrong, which fully explains what happened to get the burner address onto the list. They didn't deny the problem. They explained it and took responsibility. Reasonable people can disagree on the severity of it, but I don't see it as a huge deal.


You laymen's eye is not as sharp as it needs to be. I am also not a lawyer. Just someone who makes absolutely sure that I handle my mailing lists in a pristine way.

There are a couple of ways that sharing this database between companies went against CAN SPAM:

1) Did not notify at the time of the first send that the email address was obtained from another source. Because the recipient had not given consent, they must be notified of this. Even the Chinese spammers who harvest email addresses from Amazon get this part right (sort of, but at least they make a fumbling attempt at it). (section 3(1))

2) Cannot share the address of a person who unsubscribed with any other entity seeking to send that party email (section 5(a)(4)). It is likely that many emails in a DB collected a year to two years ago would have been unsubscribed from their original source without the same function occurring in the copy of the DB that was used at a later date. You can only share active emails and you MUST notify that those emails have come from another source.

3) If Bookzio states they will not share email addresses, that has to be the truth. Even if it is accidental that they shared. The only emails that should be in a developers test database should be the developer's own email addresses.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Nathan Elliott said:


> I don't see it as a huge deal.


Obviously.

I don't know if this is just a side gig for you or one of a bunch of "web projects" but welcome to the Author community. We write for a living. 
We are also very passionate about not annoying our subscribers, because we know the value of trust and keeping on people's good sides- by only sending opt-in emails.

Blowing this off as not a huge deal does not build confidence in your projects, which will now make us look at new book promoters with even more skepticism. And there was already a lot.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

MyraScott said:


> Obviously.
> 
> I don't know if this is just a side gig for you or one of a bunch of "web projects" but welcome to the Author community. We write for a living.
> We are also very passionate about not annoying our subscribers, because we know the value of trust and keeping on people's good sides- by only sending opt-in emails.
> ...


You're welcome to think what you like. I was reacting to the stance taken far up in this thread by another poster before we had the facts we now have. Said poster and several others did not seem to grok the technical explanation that was offered (I think there is confusion as to what "copying" refers to. I have had multiple sites hooked up to a single database as a test while I was working at comparing themes and I understand exactly how that can cause the effects Bookzio/Crave Books experienced.). I agree, NOW THAT MORE PEOPLE HAVE CHIMED IN, that it seems these addresses were harvested, and in light of that, I suspect that the explanation, while plausible technically, is quite possibly untrue.

What you and others don't know is that I once took a similar premature stance against another author service and I turned out to be full of it when the full details came to light. I helped chase off a rather promising service and I am not proud of that. (It really seemed too good to be true, but when I found out who was behind it, I understood too late why it was actually true. Unfortunately they also had better things to do than deal with crap from overly suspicious people like I was in that instance.) When I see people piling on when they lack facts or seem to misunderstand, I try to slow the process down. I am alarmed by the mob mentality I see on this site. Yeah, ultimately I agree at this point I would not touch Crave Books with the proverbial 10-foot pole. But other services (Draft2Digital comes to mind as a good example) have been treated poorly here when they first surfaced. They turned out to be the finest most competent business I've seen.

It is very hard to live, let alone run a business without ever annoying or mildly harming someone accidentally. I handle my emails with as much care as the most paranoid on here, but I can absolutely forgive someone who screws up and merges 200 addresses incorrectly. There is worse evil in the world than a dev who makes an error. I didn't think the vitriol was called for early on in the thread. Now, as that is not the full extent of what happened, I will no longer defend them. I am no more a mind reader than anyone else. Having seen firsthand how one database absolutely can be accessed by two different domains, I felt obliged to try to calm the crowd who were sure that that explanation had to be wrong on technical grounds because they claimed to have "copied" a form themselves. But again, there are different meanings of that word. If you copy a full site (e.g., bookzio) to use as a template for another, you will also be copying the config files that hook up the database, and you do indeed get this effect or one very similar.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Jill Nojack said:


> You laymen's eye is not as sharp as it needs to be. I am also not a lawyer. Just someone who makes absolutely sure that I handle my mailing lists in a pristine way.
> 
> There are a couple of ways that sharing this database between companies went against CAN SPAM:
> 
> ...


Thanks for this. I misspoke when I said I had read the law. I had read the FTC's Compliance Checklist. _If_ your #1 applies, then the checklist does not seem very complete. I would have thought the FTC was aiming for voluntary compliance by legit businesses and would therefore at least mention all the requirements. But you've referred to the definition of affirmative consent, not to a requirement that the sender get affirmative consent. I am having trouble finding such a requirement, but I am not going to spend all day looking, so I may be missing it. It may be that affirmative consent is needed only to start sending again after an unsub request. Email providers want you to have it, but I am not sure the law requires it.

However, you are guessing that #2 and #3 were violated, as we have no example of #2 and we don't know the sign-up verbiage used back then to evaluate #3. I am not saying they were or weren't violated, but upthread I didn't like to see a business publicly accused of illegal things that no one had provided evidence that they had done.(*) More people have since stepped in and offered new information, which was very helpful (but which still may not be evidence of _illegal_ activity--I am not going to read the entire law nor re-read the entire thread to be certain).

But I very much appreciate your input.

*ETA: Maybe, _if_ affirmative consent is needed, there was arguably evidence. But as I was going by the FTC checklist, I was not thinking that the migration of an address from one list to another might count as evidence by itself. I am still not sure, but for this thread's purpose, I think the point is moot anyway.


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

JulianneQJohnson said:


> I believe that your heart is in the right place and that you have implemented good business practices since you took over Bookzio. That is completely to your credit. From what folks have said in this forum, whatever happened, it happened before you purchased the business. I have no dog in this show, but from your polite and informative responses, I have come out with a positive view of your company, to the extent that I am considering using your services. You've handled the situation with a little grace and patience, and that will do much to help your business.
> 
> That said, folks will continue to discuss this. It's not only likely, it's necessary. We are predominately Indie writers. We have no big 5 publisher to look out for our interests. We must be the watchdogs for each other, so it is standard procedure for writers to bring up anything that might seem fishy and discuss it in a public forum.
> 
> ...


That is one of the most diplomatic and considerate comments I've ever seen. The world needs more people like you.



Lynna said:


> I always appreciate the cooler heads here even if I don't often say so.


Me, too. It actually is not a crime to fail to jump to conclusions as fast as someone else thinks we should. I find it amusing that for this I am apparently believed to be an alter ego of Cary Bergeron(*). What I am, actually, is someone scientifically trained who believes the truth is important. When one side isn't being considered or understood, I sometimes take the time to try to advance it to see where it leads. I do find the internet to be a very poor medium for this type of communication, though. It is too hard to gauge sincerity and tone. If other posters could read my mind, we'd have very little disagreement, but mindreading is difficult over the net. I do apparently have Asperger's, though, so I may not come across the way I intend.

It also doesn't help when other people paraphrase for me and grossly exaggerate and add their own spin to what I and others have said. We need to be more intellectually honest than that if we're going to get things right.

*--or at least some totally incorrect assumptions have been made about my income sources. I am not sure what "this" was referring to, whether to Crave Books or some other promo project I supposedly have.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Nathan Elliott said:


> You're welcome to think what you like. I was reacting to the stance taken far up in this thread by another poster before we had the facts we now have. Said poster and several others did not seem to grok the technical explanation that was offered (I think there is confusion as to what "copying" refers to. I have had multiple sites hooked up to a single database as a test while I was working at comparing themes and I understand exactly how that can cause the effects Bookzio/Crave Books experienced.). I agree, NOW THAT MORE PEOPLE HAVE CHIMED IN, that it seems these addresses were harvested, and in light of that, I suspect that the explanation, while plausible technically, is quite possibly untrue.
> 
> What you and others don't know is that I once took a similar premature stance against another author service and I turned out to be full of it when the full details came to light. I helped chase off a rather promising service and I am not proud of that. (It really seemed too good to be true, but when I found out who was behind it, I understood too late why it was actually true. Unfortunately they also had better things to do than deal with crap from overly suspicious people like I was in that instance.) When I see people piling on when they lack facts or seem to misunderstand, I try to slow the process down. I am alarmed by the mob mentality I see on this site. Yeah, ultimately I agree at this point I would not touch Crave Books with the proverbial 10-foot pole. But other services (Draft2Digital comes to mind as a good example) have been treated poorly here when they first surfaced. They turned out to be the finest most competent business I've seen.
> 
> It is very hard to live, let alone run a business without ever annoying or mildly harming someone accidentally. I handle my emails with as much care as the most paranoid on here, but I can absolutely forgive someone who screws up and merges 200 addresses incorrectly. There is worse evil in the world than a dev who makes an error. I didn't think the vitriol was called for early on in the thread. Now, as that is not the full extent of what happened, I will no longer defend them. I am no more a mind reader than anyone else. Having seen firsthand how one database absolutely can be accessed by two different domains, I felt obliged to try to calm the crowd who were sure that that explanation had to be wrong on technical grounds because they claimed to have "copied" a form themselves. But again, there are different meanings of that word. If you copy a full site (e.g., bookzio) to use as a template for another, you will also be copying the config files that hook up the database, and you do indeed get this effect or one very similar.


An appropriate and important stance, Nathan. This line -- 1) effectively vetting service providers to help colleagues steer clear of dangers while 2) not damaging legitimate providers or conflating honest mistakes with premeditated crimes -- is one of the most difficult we have to navigate, here. There's no perfect way to do it, I suspect; there will always be some who are overly suspicious and some who aren't suspicious enough. Perhaps the balance and accuracy emerges messily through the combination of many voices in discussion, with multiple contributions of evidence and interpretation. I guess that's the ideal, anyway.

If we need to err on one side or the other, I think giving the benefit of the doubt is almost always best.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Nathan Elliott said:


> You're welcome to think what you like. I was reacting to the stance taken far up in this thread by another poster before we had the facts we now have. Said poster and several others did not seem to grok the technical explanation that was offered (I think there is confusion as to what "copying" refers to. I have had multiple sites hooked up to a single database as a test while I was working at comparing themes and I understand exactly how that can cause the effects Bookzio/Crave Books experienced.). I agree, NOW THAT MORE PEOPLE HAVE CHIMED IN, that it seems these addresses were harvested, and in light of that, I suspect that the explanation, while plausible technically, is quite possibly untrue.


The technical "explanation" that was offered was BS. Furthermore, I know very well what the word "copying" means and as the "said poster", I don't appreciate the insult. You can blow smoke up butts with convoluted explanations all you want. It really doesn't matter how it happened, it's the fact that it did happen. The bottom line is that the developer retained subscriber information from Bookzio after selling Bookzio and those subscribers were given to Crave Books. Whether deliberate or accidental, the facts are the same. The developer clearly stated his company copied subscriber information from Bookzio, kept that subscriber information in a database, and then merged it into Crave Books. 


CraveBooks.com said:


> During development of CraveBooks.com a very similar book submission form was used. This is a Gravity Forms plugin and a well know product in the WordPress community. To save time, this form was copied from an old database of Bookzio.com by our developer. Author emails that were collected from 2015 and into 2016 ended up in this new form database and then later merged with our ongoing list building efforts as development progressed.





Nathan Elliott said:


> If other posters could read my mind, we'd have very little disagreement, but mindreading is difficult over the net. I do apparently have Asperger's, though, so I may not come across the way I intend.
> 
> It also doesn't help when other people paraphrase for me and grossly exaggerate and add their own spin to what I and others have said. We need to be more intellectually honest than that if we're going to get things right.


No one added their own spin to anything, and I'm not sure why your personal medical issues are relevant to this discussion. This is a very big issue for those of us who are responsible with our subscriber lists. If you want to say it's no big deal, offer up explanations for it, or argue about how you think it technically doesn't violate any laws, then more power to you. Obviously you don't need to hear anything else any of us have to say. Those who misuse subscriber information are making a lot of problems for authors who rely on their subscriber lists. Many of us have taken a lot of time, spent a lot of money, and worked our butts off to cultivate a healthy list with engaged subscribers. When businesses engage in shady practices, it affects us all. Our inboxes are full of unsolicited emails. Our subscribers are flooded with the same nonsense.

_Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> The technical "explanation" that was offered was BS. Furthermore, I know very well what the word "copying" means and as the "said poster", I don't appreciate the insult. You can blow smoke up butts with convoluted explanations all you want. It really doesn't matter how it happened, it's the fact that it did happen. The bottom line is that the developer retained subscriber information from Bookzio after selling Bookzio and those subscribers were given to Crave Books. Whether deliberate or accidental, the facts are the same. The developer clearly stated his company copied subscriber information from Bookzio, kept that subscriber information in a database, and then merged it into Crave Books.
> No one added their own spin to anything, and I'm not sure why your personal medical issues are relevant to this discussion. This is a very big issue for those of us who are responsible with our subscriber lists. If you want to say it's no big deal, offer up explanations for it, or argue about how you think it technically doesn't violate any laws, then more power to you. Obviously you don't need to hear anything else any of us have to say. Those who misuse subscriber information are making a lot of problems for authors who rely on their subscriber lists. Many of us have taken a lot of time, spent a lot of money, and worked our butts off to cultivate a healthy list with engaged subscribers. When businesses engage in shady practices, it affects us all. Our inboxes are full of unsolicited emails. Our subscribers are flooded with the same nonsense.
> 
> _Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


ebbrown, I saw Nathan's point to be some to the effect of, "I rushed to judgment at one point in the past when I should not have, and that act did some damage, so now rushing to judgment is something I worry about. I thought that might be happening here, based on early posts in the thread. Now that more people have provided evidence and I've been pointed to a better description of the law, I can see the judgment was very likely appropriate. That said, rushing to judgment is still something we should be careful of, in general." I hope I didn't misunderstand him. If I didn't, then it sounds to me like he probably agrees with your judgment of the situation now but but didn't arrive at that stance until his later posts in the thread.

Nathan's reference to having Asperger's strikes me as relevant because of potential effect on receiving and conveying subtle communication cues. It should go without saying that everyone has to comport themselves calmly and politely, here, but I think it's helpful to recognize some members may face communication challenges others don't. For that reason, I'm glad he shared that info with us.

To all, hopefully this thread can remain open, so that further relevant information can be posted. For instance, what if other sites besides Bookzio and Crave Books turn out to have been involved? Having all that in one place would be useful.

_I've excised material from my response in keeping with moderation team decisions regarding edits to ebbrown's post. I've also replaced my quotation of her original post with the edited version. - Becca_


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> The technical "explanation" that was offered was BS. Furthermore, I know very well what the word "copying" means and as the "said poster", I don't appreciate the insult. You can blow smoke up butts with convoluted explanations all you want. It really doesn't matter how it happened, it's the fact that it did happen. The bottom line is that the developer retained subscriber information from Bookzio after selling Bookzio and those subscribers were given to Crave Books. Whether deliberate or accidental, the facts are the same. The developer clearly stated his company copied subscriber information from Bookzio, kept that subscriber information in a database, and then merged it into Crave Books.
> No one added their own spin to anything, and I'm not sure why your personal medical issues are relevant to this discussion. This is a very big issue for those of us who are responsible with our subscriber lists. If you want to say it's no big deal, offer up explanations for it, or argue about how you think it technically doesn't violate any laws, then more power to you. Obviously you don't need to hear anything else any of us have to say. Those who misuse subscriber information are making a lot of problems for authors who rely on their subscriber lists. Many of us have taken a lot of time, spent a lot of money, and worked our butts off to cultivate a healthy list with engaged subscribers. When businesses engage in shady practices, it affects us all. Our inboxes are full of unsolicited emails. Our subscribers are flooded with the same nonsense.
> 
> _Edited. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


I don't know whether to believe you or my own lying eyes on the database thing.

EB, I respect you, but at this point your opinion of me matters not at all. Interested people with time to spare can compare what I said, in its proper context of the comments above it and with the facts or lack thereof which had been reported above it, with your over-the-top characterization of it. They can make up their own minds.

I feel no need to defend myself to you.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> Nathan's reference to having Asperger's strikes me as relevant because of potential effect on receiving and conveying subtle communication cues. It should go without saying that everyone has to comport themselves calmly and politely, here, but I think it's helpful to recognize some members may face communication challenges others don't. For that reason, I'm glad he shared that info with us.
> 
> To all, hopefully this thread can remain open, so that further relevant information can be posted. For instance, what if other sites besides Bookzio and Crave Books turn out to have been involved? Having all that in one place would be useful.


I don't agree at all that bringing personal medical issues into a discussion is productive to a conversation, especially when repeated insults are being thrown into posts, instead of addressing his concerns directly with the person he's targeting. We've been down that road before here with an individual; I thought in that thread we were advised to leave personal/medical/family issues out of the discussion. Disagreeing and asking questions is not "mob mentality", nor any of the descriptors that have been applied to me and others who disagree. I agree to disagree with you on that line of thought, Becca.

I don't think that anyone rushed to judgement. I do see that hard questions were asked and there were plenty of explanations thrown around. What first threw up a red flag to me was that I felt that the way Patrice was treated was wrong, especially when she was emailed by the owner of Bookzio. 


Marseille said:


> Interesting. Bookzio owner has been PMing me saying I was the only one with this issue and wondered why I used a burner email. Perhaps he didn't know this I suggested he move on from cross-examining me and look into why this happened.


While Philip's initial post was well said, it throws up red flags to me that he then proceeded to message Patrice and tell her she was the only one with the issue. It appears that later, when Bergman posted explanations, Philip stated he was unaware of what Bergman had done. Bergman's responses entirely throw up red flags on multiple levels. Philip bought Bookzio from Bergman, so I hope he gets some resolution on the matter.

I am glad Patrice posted about the issue with that particular burner email; further sharing of information will certainly help authors narrow down where spam emails are coming from, and it will help find the common denominator so we can all make informed choices.



Nathan Elliott said:


> I don't know whether to believe you or my own lying eyes on the database thing.
> 
> EB, I respect you, but at this point your opinion of me matters not at all. Interested people with time to spare can compare what I said, in its proper context of the comments above it and with the facts or lack thereof which had been reported above it, with your over-the-top characterization of it. They can make up their own minds.
> 
> I feel no need to defend myself to you.


I have no idea who you are & I have no concern what you think of me. I'm out here publicly, there's no mystery of who I am. 
I objected to the passive aggressive comments directed at me by you, and advised you to quote me if you have need to disparage any statements that I make so that I (fairly) have the opportunity to respond. When communicating online, it is impossible to read anyone's mind, so saying what you mean in direct terms is important if you intend to have a discussion. If you have an issue with something said and feel you need to reply, making vague comments about it in the context of other posts takes away from the actual issue and doesn't give the other person an opportunity to respond.

[quote author=Nathan Elliott]Me, too. It actually is not a crime to fail to jump to conclusions as fast as someone else thinks we should. I find it amusing that for this I am apparently believed to be an alter ego of Cary Bergeron(*). What I am, actually, is someone scientifically trained who believes the truth is important. When one side isn't being considered or understood, I sometimes take the time to try to advance it to see where it leads. I do find the internet to be a very poor medium for this type of communication, though. It is too hard to gauge sincerity and tone. If other posters could read my mind, we'd have very little disagreement, but mindreading is difficult over the net. I do apparently have Asperger's, though, so I may not come across the way I intend.

It also doesn't help when other people paraphrase for me and grossly exaggerate and add their own spin to what I and others have said. We need to be more intellectually honest than that if we're going to get things right.

*--or at least some totally incorrect assumptions have been made about my income sources. I am not sure what "this" was referring to, whether to Crave Books or some other promo project I supposedly have.[/quote]
Disagreeing is not spinning what you said. Disagreeing does not make my opinion any less intellectually honest than yours.

As for the actual issue at hand, it would be great if Bergman would say what business he runs where he creates start-up companies. Bergman stated he was going to use Bookzio to "hold as a site in our portfolio", well, what is the name of Bergman's business and what is the website address? I'd be very interested to see that portfolio to see what other websites his company is linked to. Is he running Crave Books, does he still own it, has it been bought by the client he designed it for, or what? That is all very unclear and very muddied.

I have an email address that I only use for signing up for promotions on my pen name; in the last year I've tried a few new, smaller promotion sites, and that particular inbox is flooded with spam emails from promo companies (like Crave Books) that I never signed up for. I'd be very interested to see if any of the promo sites I used are linked to that company. Again, the anonymity is something that is concerning.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

ebbrown said:


> I don't agree at all that bringing personal medical issues into a discussion is productive to a conversation, especially when repeated insults are being thrown into posts, instead of addressing his concerns directly with the person he's targeting. We've been down that road before here with an individual; I thought in that thread we were advised to leave personal/medical/family issues out of the discussion. Disagreeing and asking questions is not "mob mentality", nor any of the descriptors that have been applied to me and others who disagree. I agree to disagree with you on that line of thought, Becca.


"I may not have gotten my thoughts across effectively because I'm on the spectrum" is a way of accepting responsibility for a possible miscommunication. It doesn't strike me as similar to what happened in the thread I think you're referencing above.

I've read all of Nathan's responses several times now, and I simply am not seeing the offensive material there that you seem to be seeing, Beth. He appears to have been driven out of the thread. Further remarks directed at him will be deleted.


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## Taking my troll a$$ outta here (Apr 8, 2013)

Becca Mills said:


> "I may not have gotten my thoughts across effectively because I'm on the spectrum" is a way of accepting responsibility for a possible miscommunication. It doesn't strike me as similar to what happened in the thread I think you're referencing above.
> 
> I've read all of Nathan's responses several times now, and I simply am not seeing the offensive material there that you seem to be seeing, Beth. He appears to have been driven out of the thread. Further remarks directed at him will be deleted.


And that's what's called 'having a difference of opinion.' The passive aggressive insults are quite clear to me, and I was referred to as "said poster and others" and "another poster", quite clear he was referring to me and others who disagreed with him. 
Delete whatever you choose to delete, including my account. 
Peace.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

EB isn't the only one who got the same things out of comments here. Passive aggressive is exactly right, and when called on it, we got told the person's condition could be the reason. That is probably true, but it doesn't excuse the fact that something hinky is going on, and those of us who are questioning it are insulted without any apparent recourse.

None of us have said these _people_ are bad, only that the business practices coming to light are unethical and in some cases illegal. That's not a bad thing to do. It's what this forum is good at. The patterns shown here are typical, in that those questioning what's going on are insulted and dismissed, and the posters become increasingly defensive without addressing legitimate issues that are brought up.


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## Nathalie Aynie (Nov 24, 2013)

By the way, checking if someone sold your email address from another list, if you want to go through the trouble, is pretty easy if you have a gmail address.

Here's how:

For example, let's say John Doe wants to register to my mailing list.
He can register with his email [email protected], and never know if I sold his email to someone.
OR, he can register with [email protected] and see if only my e-mails go to that address. If other emails come to that address, something shady might be going on!

You can change the part behind the + with anything you want, and it'll go to your Gmail address anyway.
You can have as many of those as you choose.

Test it. 

Hope this helps!


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Nathalie Aynie said:


> By the way, checking if someone sold your email address from another list, if you want to go through the trouble, is pretty easy if you have a gmail address.
> 
> Here's how:
> 
> ...


I regularly do a search on my list and delete the people who do this. I think it's creepy.


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## Nathalie Aynie (Nov 24, 2013)

Patty Jansen said:


> I regularly do a search on my list and delete the people who do this. I think it's creepy.


Why is it creepy?


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Nathalie Aynie said:


> Why is it creepy?


I state specifically that I never pass on addresses. Those 2-3 people per year I find doing this don't trust me. Out they go.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

Who'd be a mod?


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