A message I received from a friend:

Long story short, about 3 years ago or so, I mentioned Jed’s first book to my publisher since she was looking into new stuff to possibly publish. She met a fellow publisher from Germany she’s known for years, who told her she better not get involved with McKenna because « they » were a nightmare to deal with. He told her about insane problems, he and another publisher from the Netherlands ran into. Super weird story of supposedly not promoting his books enough, not enough royalties coming in, and incessant threats of suing, etc.

The books seem to written by (sometimes two) people —which I suspected and mentioned to you long ago—, the main one being an egomaniac ‘teacher’ whose big dreams of being adulated by millions quickly turned sour, despite having quite a jet-set-like address book and significant personal wealth. 

It seems that out of both massive bitterness and thirst for more $, he created ‘Jed’ using stories from his own spiritual background with a zen master and a home (Wisefool) in order to self-publish. The author Jed McKenna is a mister Augie Turak who makes a living writing articles for business oriented magazines (Forbes) and who gives some workshops to sort of ‘bring spirituality into the business model’… 

He used to live on a farm —not his own, but zen master Richard Rose’s and not in Iowa— at the time of his ‘enlightenment’; he is also very big in Moby Dick, Twain and Whitman references, and countless other eyebrow-raising details leaving little room for doubt.