…At least, everything to do with this plagiarism thing. She’s got multiple posts up about this on her blog now; the most recent addresses comments she’s been getting from people who want her to take a stand against plagiarism, but not a very strong stand.
Blowback’s inevitable when you go public–especially on social media–about any issue.
With this one, I’m finding (unsurprisingly) people who object, complain, or smack at me and others tend to be protecting their own interests.
It’s all, yes! Fix this, fight this, go after the crooks and scammers, make the system fair. But don’t talk about or criticize or upset my personal apple cart…
And then she addresses the sorts of comments she’s been getting.
I think she’s right in exactly 100% of her comments.
She’s really mad, too. Check this out:
To those publishing ‘books’ using these tactics, whether it’s hiring ghosts then slapping your name on a book, whether it’s stealing work someone else sweated over, you’re thieves and liars. Every one of you. And none of you will ever be a writer.
You know who you are.
Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s now my mission to turn over the rocks you hide under, then stomp you deep in the muck you breed in.
To the black hats who exploit, steal, tutor others to do the same, your day of reckoning’s coming.
I swear I’ll do whatever I can, use whatever resources, connections, clout, megaphone I have to out every damn one of you.
Wow. Good for her, and this would be a great time for RWA to really give Amazon a push. There have to be ways to lock down some of this plagiarism and theft. If TurnItIn could spot this stuff — and it could — then where’s Amazon? Nora Roberts has a high profile and a big following, so maybe she can get somewhere.
Also: I had no idea about ghostfarms. Or clickfarms. Good heavens above, people. I thought book stuffing was the absolute nadir, and I can’t see why Amazon can’t develop an algorithm or two to check for that. Then this hack-and-slash plagiarism that TurnItIn could catch in a heartbeat, but I guess Amazon can’t? And now ghostfarms and clickfarms.
I can’t even imagine what scammers will come up with next.
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I still don’t grasp the plagiarist mindset. Certainly in the example of #copypastecris it looks really like there was a lot work involved in locating the relevant text, then copying and pasting, then publishing. And still more work involved in denying everything.
Evelyn, do you ever cut a big chunk out of a WIP, move it to a different file, and then re-integrate bits of it elsewhere or into a new scene? I sometimes find myself doing that, and it sounds to me something like the same kind of exercise. I’m actually not sure whether it’s less work than re-writing the new scene from scratch, but it lets you save some paragraphs or lines you really like. I wonder if this cut-and-paste type of plagiarism is sort of like that — fishing for great lines or paragraphs from popular books and trying to write scenes to fit those lines into? Maybe thinking, “since this book was popular, mine should also be popular because I’m using exactly the same words?”
Not sure that sounds plausible. Just trying to see what the thought process could be.
I don’t get it either.
I prefer to steal the scenes and rework all the sentences. 0:)
Mary–absolutely! Plus way the scene ends … and the way it opens …
Maybe. Sometimes you steal it to liberate it from its ending.