[C. Gockel]

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.

 

[Incognita]

 

[Guest]

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...

 

[AJC]

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.

 

[75814]

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

 

[AJC]

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. 

 

[75814]

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

 

[archaeoroutes]

Got my 'reader' one today.

 

[Marseille France or Bust]

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.

 

[Marseille France or Bust]

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.

 

[Bookzio.com]

Hello,

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.

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

 

[Word Fan]

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.

 

[Marseille France or Bust]

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:

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.

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

 

[75814]

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.

 

[CraveBooks.com]

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.

 

[Taking my troll a$$ outta here]

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.

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.

 

[Marseille France or Bust]

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.

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.

 

[Taking my troll a$$ outta here]

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.

 

[Nathan Elliott]

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.

 

[Taking my troll a$$ outta here]

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.

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.

...

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