Russ
Istar
Out of curiousity, what unethical practices and what in particular does he seem to not be informed about? I've followed him for a number of years as well and I think his worst quality is just that he tends to be a bit of a loud mouth and very... direct in his opinions. But I have not seen anything wrong with the actual content of his advice that I can remember.
And I don't think Lee Child kicked his ass at all. Child is very knowledgeable about his own publishing experience, which is totally uncommon. He has no idea how the system treats the average writer. He's a 1 % author thinking he can tell the 99% how things are.
Among other things, which would take much longer to explain, I think Konrath's position on fake and bought reviews is completely unethical.
I do think Lee more than got the best of him in that exchange, but people can read it for themselves and decide what they think.
I also think you are being very unfair to Lee saying that he is a 1% author who is unqualified to comment on how the industry works overall. That simply shows you don't know the man or his work in the industry and for authors. Firstly Lee when he appeared on Konrath's blog was speaking as a rep for Author's United around the very troubling issue with Hachette, and I think Lee was on the right side of that fight, not for himself, but for authors and a good publishing industry in general.
Further Lee works hard on behalf of other author's organizations who work hard on behalf of average authors, and aspiring authors. He is currently coming off a very active term as President of ITW and has done similar unpaid work for other organizations. During that time he has kept himself informed, and in fact commissioned studies on the state of the publishing industry overall and what that means for unpublished and not yet branded authors and their careers. He has served his constituency very well indeed. And I suspect considering his success and workload he had no need to do any of that work at all. I am grateful that he has.
I can guarantee you that Lee is extremely well informed on how things work for both the average writer and the aspiring writer because he has worked at it and genuinely seems to care about it. To suggest otherwise is simply unfair and inaccurate.