Yesterday, my local Romance Writers of America (RWA) Chapter, Washington Romance Writers (WRW), had a discussion about plagiarism. Author Nora Roberts and blogger/author Sarah Wendell talked about the different reactions from readers once plagiarism is discovered. Nora was plagiarized by Janet Daily back in the late nineties. I remember this well. I was still going to RWA conferences regularly back then, and everybody was talking about it. Here’s a summary of what Roberts talked about yesterday. This is from this Wikipedia link, under the Plagiarism heading:
In 1997, another best-selling romance writer, Janet Dailey, admitted to repeatedly plagiarizing from Roberts’ work. The practice came to light after a reader read Roberts’ Sweet Revenge and Dailey’s Notorious back-to-back; she noticed several similarities and posted the comparable passages on the Internet. Calling the plagiarism “mind rape,” Roberts sued Dailey. Dailey acknowledged the plagiarism and blamed it on a psychological disorder. She admitted that both Aspen Gold and Notorious lifted heavily from Roberts’s work. Both of those novels were pulled from print after Dailey’s admission. In April 1998 Dailey settled the case. Although terms were not released, Roberts had previously indicated that any settlement funds should be donated to the Literacy Volunteers of America.
When Sarah Wendell exposed the Cassie Edwards’ case on (NOTE, THIS IS A SECULAR ROMANCE SITE AND THERE’S SOME PROFANITY ON IT. I’M LINKING TO IT BECAUSE IT’S THE BLOG POST THAT EXPOSED AUTHOR CASSIE EDWARDS’ PLAGIARISM AND IT WAS THE SUBJECT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT YESTERDAY.)her blog, it was a more recent event, but there were mixed (many negative) reactions from her blog readers.
It appears that when this happens, some make the plagiarizer out to be the victim! Now, that’s frightening! And we’re not talking about just one sentence that was copied. We’re talking about whole passages that were copied from one author’s work to another author’s book…several passages! They may have changed the character names, and a word or two, but it’s basically the same passage!
If a writer is the victim of plagiarism, then they have every right to let others know that their words were stolen! I feel that some readers don’t realize how much time and effort goes into writing a book! If this were to happen to me, I’d be dumbfounded, hurt, and highly upset.
Nora and Sarah took questions, and somebody asked how they felt about the younger generation and plagiarism. With the internet, it’s easy to look stuff up, copy and paste it into a document, change a few words, and then call it your own? Nora said that the kids need to be taught that it’s wrong to take words, change them a bit, and then call them their own! This question prompted me to mention this fairly recent case, involving Kaavya Viswanathan, and her novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, And Got A Life. Kaavya was around twenty when this novel was released. What bothers me is, Kaavya apparently got to keep her advance? I did read this novel (even though it had been pulled from the shelves) I already had a copy. I also had the Megan McCafferty book from which Kaavya had stolen passages. I loved the Kaavya novel, but couldn’t get through the McCafferty book. Was it youth and immaturity that played into Kaavya’s decision to plagiarize? I feel she knew what she was doing! Also, since I enjoyed the novel, I feel that she could have developed a talent, eventually, to write a good novel. By making this foolish decision, she ended her literary career forever (at least I think she did)?
However, when plagiarism happens, the plagiarizer will sometimes go on to another publisher, and continue to write books and get them published! That’s a frightening thought!
A used bookstore owner was present. She had two old Harlequin/Silhouette titles by two different authors. She said that someone came into her store a long time ago, upset because, apparently, there were passages that were copied from one book to the other. This made me think that plagiarism is a problem that needs to be fully brought to light and squelched! Often, when the crime happens, the offender continues to publish books! It doesn’t always ruin their career!
I believe there MAY be several books out there that were plagiarized – however, the crime may never be discovered since there are a gazillion books published, and the chances of someone reading the two books back to back (which seems to be how this crime is sometimes discovered) is minimal. However, with the internet, it is sometimes easier to find copied books, especially with some books scanned on Google. This would therefore make it easier at times to find passages from novels that were used elsewhere.
I got to thinking about this yesterday and wondered if this problem exists in the Christian market? I’ve never heard of it happening there, but if anybody has, please comment on this blog post and let me, and other blog readers, know the details.
Oh, well, I guess we have to do what we can, and leave the rest in the Lord’s hands!
Whoa! Sounds brutal! We definitely need to put a stop to this! I feel like literary works are being pimped!
This is awful! The Lord’s looking down on those plagiarizers now, frowning and crying over their dishonesty!
You repeatedly suggest that plagiarizers should never be allowed to publish again, as if it was the unpardonable sin. It’s not.
One of the most well-know plagiarists of our times was Martin Luther King, Jr. Google that and you will see that it has been proved that he “lifted” portions of doctoral dissertation at Boston University from other writers. He had his excuses, of course, but the fact remains.
If he would have been banned from writing further, we would not have the “I have a dream” speech and his other works.
Plagiarism is extremely bad. But there are worse things.
Plagarism sucks the big one. I would hate to have my work copied after I labor so hard over it, but there are worse things. But I have to agree with DL. It’s just not an unforgivable sin. Nobody’s stopping adulterers from remarrying. Bad check writers from getting new checking accounts, bad mothers from having more kids. I think we need perspective on this. There should be consequences, but to never publish again, I think that’s too much. Don’t we all need grace. I know I do, everyday.
I have to ask this … how exactly is it plagiarism if you are stating facts about things that have happened in history? I mean I get it about copying word for word, but I thought facts were facts???
Hi, Belinda
I don’t think that stating facts is plagiarism. If I implied otherwise in my post, then I didn’t mean to. I wrote this post about seven years ago. Your comment did bring something to my mind, though. I recall in high school and college, when I learned to write research papers, that we had to state the source from which we got our facts. We had to use footnotes (I think that’s what they were called). We may have even provided a bibliography at the end of our paper, too? I’ve even noticed that some novelists will provide some of their research sources in their Author notes. I will sometimes see this with historical novels.
Oh, I noticed that some of the old comments implied that my post was harsh, that a person who plagiarizes should still be allowed to publish.
Yes, I do agree, to a point. In my post, I was not clear on my reasoning about the plagiarizer continuing to publish. I feel that there should be some repercussions to his/her actions. If people see that these plagiarizers made this huge mistake, and it didn’t affect their careers at all, then, that may encourage other writers to plagiarize, mistakenly thinking that they will not get “caught” and that it won’t affect their careers at all. I should have been more clear about that in my post.
So, yes, they should be allowed to continue their careers, but, it needs to be understood that it’s not okay to copy someone else’s work and claim it as your own. I’d think the plagiarizer’s career would be stilted for awhile before allowing them to publish again, but, that’s just my humble opinion, for what it’s worth.
Yep, you are right… however how does an author of fiction draw the line with this when stating facts… I mean our books can’t read like a research paper… I do think this can be solved by not excessively using anything whether it be facts. Also, something authors may want to do is state resources in the back of their book … I mean that would be the nice thing to do.
Hi, Belinda
I think you may be over-analyzing this a bit. What kind of novel are you writing? Is it a historical novel? I’d imagine you’d want the things going on in the world, mentioned in your novel, to be accurate. You’d also want the day-to-day lives of the people you are portraying to be accurate. Like, if you are writing a historical novel set in 1600, you wouldn’t have people walking around in blue jeans and driving automobiles. You also would not mention the events of 9/11 back in 1600 – that is, unless you are writing sci-fi/time-travel type of novel.
For my novel, Milk Money, I visited a small family dairy farm, spent time with the family, helped them to milk their herd. I also read a lot of books about dairy farming. When I was finished with my novel, I got 2 dairy farmers to read the manuscript to ensure my farming scenes were accurate. When the novel was published, in my Author Note, I gave credit to the Higgins family, publicly thanking them for allowing me to visit their farm and milk their herd.
Your comment brings something to mind. One reason that I don’t write historicals? It’s because I don’t really know a lot of history off the top of my head. Yeah, I learned history in grammar school and high school, but, outside of that, my historical knowledge is sketchy, at best. I never took a history class in college because it was not required. Yeah, I know we have the internet to research stuff now, and that can be helpful, but, you must know what you are specifically researching when you search. You can get tons of stuff off the internet and it’s not always easy to tell which sites state the truth.
I’ve spoken to tons of historical romance authors at writers conferences and a lot of their knowledge is ingrained in their minds. They’re passionate history and spending time reading about the past is fun to them. Talking to them is like talking to a mini-encyclopedia! No, I’m not kidding. Knowing their historical stuff is so second-nature that they have to do minimal research when they sit down to write their novels.
For my bakery books, I visited a local bakery to see how it was run. Asked the baker lots of questions. I also do a lot of baking myself, so, the subject matter was not totally foreign to me.
At times, historical authors may list some books that they used for reference, either in their Author Note, or in the back of the book? But, again, sometimes, they just know their stuff, almost like it’s second nature. For example, we know that George Washington is the first president of the United States. I’d feel comfortable not having to research that if I stated it as a fact in my novel.
Let me know if you have more specific questions about research/stating facts and I’ll be happy to respond.
Oh, another thing. I’ve heard editors at conferences state that sometimes they reject manuscripts because they read like an encyclopedia! The author did their research, and they want the editor to know that they have a wealth of knowledge about the subject. Sometimes, a wealth of knowledge is not necessary to place into the novel, you just need to state a few things. I’ve heard authors state that when they research a topic, they only use about 10-25% of their researched knowledge in their manuscript. They don’t need to state every single fact.
Hope that helps….