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by SB Sarah • Tuesday, January 08, 2008 at 05:57 AM
Nikki the Super Badass Researcher contacted me yesterday upon realizing that she had a Cassie Edwards in her possession, and she had access to Google, and she had an hour to spare:
I must admit, it was worse than I feared. My “evidence” file grew to six--6!--pages in Word. The worst part? I have an unsettling feeling that these are not the only questionable sections--simply the only ones I could locate via Google. There’s one passage in particular about the male sage grouse’s mating ritual, of all things, that’s extremely suspect.
One last thing, which I thought was deliciously ironic. The heroine’s name in this book is Candy.
I just made a noise I cannot transcribe accurately, but it was somewhere between a choke and a snort.
.Now for the Official Findings.
There were three texts heavily, shall we say, “borrowed” from:
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE WICHITA by George Amos Dorsey, published in 1904
Available at Google Books
Available in its original form at Archive.org.CADDOAN TEXTS PAWNEE, SOUTH BAND DIALECT by Gene Weltfish, published in 1937
Available at Google BooksINDIAN BOYHOOD by Charles Alexander Eastman, published in 1902
Available at Google Books.
Available in its original form at Archive.org.I had to get a bit tricksy when searching CADDOAN TEXTS because it’s only available for viewing snippets via Google--not full text. Luckily, the search function provided enough phrasing to recreate the relevant passages although attempting to verify the scans of the actual words wasn’t possible due to the limited view restriction. I’m confident the search function is accurate, however, and no weirdness thanks to OCR occurred in those sections.
Examples positively identified are pasted below along with their corresponding counterparts in the source material. There are several damning sections, the lengthiest one located on pages 213-214 (yes, it spans two pages) and covers nearly four paragraphs.
I’ve placed the Oddly Similar sections in bold so I hope it carries over to your email programs. Also, I’m pretty sure I caught all my typos but I may have missed one or two. If so, apologies but Y’ALL! My fingers are tired.
Here’s the side by side that Nikki found and emailed us. Big hat tip and curtsey to Nikki, because this is above and beyond. In many, many ways.
Good lord. I will be very upset if something isn’t done about this by the publishing industry. Part of me wants Edwards to be publicly humiliated, but I’m worried non-romance readers will mistake her for the rest of the romance world.
And that would be a damn shame.
said on...Just when I thought my jaw couldn’t drop any further, it has unhinged to the point where I could swallow a water buffalo.
Pitchfork? Check. Torch? Check. Utter disappointment at Ms. Edwards for more than just the horrible depiction of Native Americans? Check.
I agree with Jen. I can almost see this going “Oh they ALL must do this then”. This is a shame, but I’m willing to bet on works as old as the ones she “borrowed” from, more than she has done it.
said on...Dear heaven, more? Although the theft of even one piece of work is reprehensible, this is off the charts. How much more monstrous can this get?
I want to ask how no one caught this before, but these are obscure and unknown texts for your average reader. I’ve certainly never heard of any of them (that may just mean I’m a slouch, though)!
Yes, Karen and Candy and Nikki found them with very little initial digging, but how many people are actually going to do that digging? Most people will just roll their eyes and think, “sucky book, bad writing,” and move on. They’re not going to question the integrity of the author based on wildly uneven style. Hell, if they’re anything like me, the blocks of expository text just get skipped over.
This is just a long-winded way of saying, “Way to go, Bitches,” for uncovering this and not being afraid to speak out. Hopefully all romance doesn’t get tarred with this nasty brush.
Maybe we need to have homework assignments and every reader can take a book until all 100 have been assigned and investigated.
said on...I think your concern is missplaced, Jen. There are plenty of examples of authors plagarising that have not backlashed on to the respective genre. For example: J.K. Rowlings was accused of plagrism, but it had no effect on childrens books as a whole. Like wise James Brown faced several lawsuits but religious fictions is a strong as ever.
JaneyD said on...Has any of this been sent to Publisher’s Weekly? Seems it would make for an interesting story.
As an enraged SB fan I find this lacking in gleeful delight. Needs more cow bell!
said on...The sheer magnitude of this astounds and disgusts me. I honestly don’t know if I’ve read any of her work or not but I still feel ripped off as a reader. And another thing, if she’s done so much research and is even quoting it pretty much word for word, how come she still manages to portray Native Americans so very badly?
said on...I think the problem is that the people (in the many examples cited) doing this “copying” have probably rationalized that it isn’t plagiarism.
What lead me to this thinking is I was in an off-line discussion with a friend and she said that she thought plagiarizing only occurred when you copied word for word. Yeah she is a college educated professional, before anyone asks.
I think that part of the problem is our culture has adopted an “it’s okay if you just put it in your own words” mentality. Which I think stems from a contemporary fluidity with what words mean. But that is another rant.
My point is we just don’t see plagerism as really stealing really. Just kinda borrowing stuff that doesn’t matter.
That is the ONLY explanation my mind could come up with to some of the responses defending CE. That what she did was only sorta of plagiarizing and the folks who had the bad taste to mention it were only doing so to be mean.
So she should get a pass because her feelings got hurt… whatever dude.
One of the interesting points that came up during my off-line conversation was the fact that we couldn’t recall ever seeing a bibliography or sources cited in other historicals, with the exception of some mention in forward or acknowledgements.
But the truth is that I usually don’t pay attention and maybe that is what those who engage in this behavior are thinking or counting on.
That no one is going to notice.~A
said on...All I can think of is that this whole thing wouldn’t have been an issue if she would have just CITED HER DAMN SOURCES.
Jesus, people. How hard can it be? I’ve written more than my fair share of papers in my lifetime, and they all had a fucking ‘BIBLIOGRAPY’ page or 5 at the end. Why can’t fiction authors do that? IS IT THAT DAMN HARD? I’m not even picky. You can use your preferred format. MLA, APA, whatever.
Ugh. C’mon.
Couple of thoughts today on this topic…
Wonder when Edwards originally published some of these works and if any of them predated the academic tomes. (Probably not, but would be interesting to state.)
and
I found a mention of someone else plagiarizing Edwards on a discussion forum talking about, of all things, Sasquatch (http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=21116&st=350), post #356: “...When I embarked on finding the source of Jan Carter’s “dictionary” of Sasquatch words, and I found Rides the Wind, I thought I’d found the single source in a plagiarized fashion. But I also found a phrase in a Cassie Edwards book called Savage Fire. Being the owner of several Edwards books, and one new one, I decided to start reading them over again. They’re good books so that was not a challenge for me. I started with the newest acquisition, and sure enough, page after page was revealed to me with definitions written phonetically as with Rides the Wind. This book was first published in 1986. One particular definition stood out. It was spelled identically to Cassie’s definition. Jan’s definition was translated to mean, “True Friends, that is what you two have proven to be.” Cassie Edwards, who spent many months researching languages as a true author should, defined the exact same sentence as “Partners in Crime, that is what you two have proven to be.”...”
Interesting, no?
said on...I’ll admit that I would dearly love to know what kinds of conversations are happening at the Cassie Edwards Fan Club message boards: http://cassieedwardsfanclub.homestead.com/InfoPage.html
Alas, there’s a $13 registration fee, and my cheapness outweighs my curiosity.
I’m no expert on citation, but I’m not sure a bibliography would’ve been enough here. Wouldn’t the copied (exactly) text have to be in quotes or italices?
Agreed, Victoria. She needed to cite her sources and reword the information into her own words. Lifting verbatim or almost verbatim without quotes and attribution is a no-no.
said on...Wow. Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, has the copy/paste mouse click ever been so abused before? I don’t have feelings for Cassie Edwards one way or the other, but it’s sad that as Jen pointed out (look! credited another person’s work CE - watch and learn), that this will reflect badly on the romance genre as a whole. There are so many writers out there who actually take the time to research their work properly.
I don’t think this will reflect negatively on the romance genre any more than the Janet Dailey/Nora Roberts incident did.
I wasn’t reading romance then, but I think Dailey-gate only bothered romance fans. I don’t recall that it meant a lot to me and my fellow murder mystery and thriller fans. A small blip on the literary radar, fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it).
Well. It probably bothered Dailey’s publisher. I imagine her sales took a hit since romance is such a fan purchase-driven genre.
What occurs over the next few weeks/months should be interesting. I wonder what the publishers/authors of the academic texts are doing right now…
A word or two on citing sources: Not all publishers of romance novels wish for authors to list extensive bibliographies or cite sources in the manuscript. It is, after all, a novel. I always try to include an author’s note regarding the historical accuracy of particular characters or scenes, or clarifying that while my book’s set in Florida, my setting of “Key Marquez” is a fictional amalgamation of a couple of real Florida sites.
And I always encourage readers to contact me if they want to know my sources. It’s fun to share, especially when you’re a history wonk.[g]
For benefit of the Cassie Edwards apologists who may still be reading, and to wave some heat off the beloved Bitches and onto myself: my mood toward this discovery is pure naked glee unalloyed by pity or sympathy. This woman writes horrible books and portrays Native Americans in horrible ways--even if there were no Native Americans in her novels and she was writing about the Revolutionary War, they would still have plots made of sand and characters made of wood--and the fact that she clearly has the resource material sitting right there only serves to make her novels even more inexcusable. And why yes, Cassie Edwards did run over my dog.
(My confirmation word: red42. As in red-handed. As in how Cassie Edwards has been found. The only person I’d rather see this happen to is Laurell K. Hamilton.)
I’d give her the benefit of the doubt and say maybe she misinterpreted the whole “Plaguerism, what is it really?” thing, but sweet baby Jesus, her stuff is crap. The quotes you present are so stiff and unnatural in delivery, I cringe trying to imagine real people saying stuff like that.
Nope, not working. I can’t imagine humans speaking like that, even if they are uptight, rather pedantic Native American history professors with sticks up their arse.
said on...<>
I’m confused.
Maybe I’m just a product of this culture, but if you turn to source material for research, read it, incorporate it into your mental knowledge base, and then rewrite that information in your book in your own - or, more accurately, the character’s - words, how is that wrong? It would be like saying you can know the stuff but could never use it.
As to the lack bibliographies, part of that may lie with the publishers. Even authors who produce a list of their source material may not be allowed to include it. IIRC, Diana Gabaldon has said she was discouraged from including a bibliography with “Outlander” and her unease with that lack eventually led - after her great sucess and therefore increased clout - to the publication of the non-fic “Outlandish Companion”.
Note: I am *not* defending CE here, because obviously what she’s done goes beyond all questions of is-it-or-isn’t-it-plagiarism and propriety, and I think action should be taken.
But as an aspiring author in the throes of my own reasearch, I’m trying to understand what good it will do me if I’m not even allowed to state the information “in my own words.”
I am glad I have never read a CE books because it looks like she has never written one… sorry, couldn’t help myself.
Didja hear that Missy Chase Lapine filed a lawsuit against the Seinfeld’s (both!) for (vegetarian) plagiarism and character defamation?
Good for her! I bought her book on principle (and by the way, my son loves the food I’ve made from it so if you can’t get your kid to eat veggies, it’s a worthy investment!).
Anyway, if you own a CE book maybe you should petition the publisher for a refund.
said on...Sara:
$13 to register for her message boards? srsly? i guess i’m sheltered; i’ve never been asked to pay to post before. register, yes; pay, no.
I think the most interesting thing about this is how old her apparent source books are. I have to wonder why she wouldn’t have used something a little more current for her information on Native Americans given that we know a lot of the earlier work was not as accurate as it could have been.
$13 to register for her message boards? srsly? i guess i’m sheltered; i’ve never been asked to pay to post before. register, yes; pay, no.
Actually, the $13 is an annual membership fee to join her fan club, which boasts a host of benefits, one of which is the message board on the fan club website.
To Ms. Marshall: I for one adore it when the author of a book has read some of the same resource material I have! Pamela Kaufman appears to have read a great number of familiar sources for her Alix of Wanthwaite series, and, more recently, I recognised a lot of sources in Water for Elephants.
Anna said on...Maybe I’m just a product of this culture, but if you turn to source material for research, read it, incorporate it into your mental knowledge base, and then rewrite that information in your book in your own - or, more accurately, the character’s - words, how is that wrong? It would be like saying you can know the stuff but could never use it.
Jenny, there’s a difference between incorporating information you’ve gathered and simply rewording that information. Technically – technically – one could argue that Ms. Edwards has several passages here which could be considered her own words because they’re not precise copies of the original. But it’s still plagiarism because the passages are so similar in structure and wording and whatnot, with no credit given or indication that she drafted those passages from scratch.
Not being Abney I can’t speak for her in the passage you quoted, but there’s a huge difference between using the information and using the text. This is a clear example of using the text.
Jenny, I think in this instance it is clear to see that CE didn’t use her own words.
What I remember from when the nuns were smacking my classmates and me over the head with our English textbooks, you CAN reword it, but rewording doesn’t mean removing one or two words from the material. It means reworking it to get the point across without using the same exact words.
I think (and that’s always a bad thing) that the passage on page 49 of Savage Longings could have read:
The root digger was a thin pointed tool made from the wood of the ash tree that could be utilized in the extraction of ground roots. A protective grip existed on one end while the tip was strengthened with the heat from the fire.
If it had (rather than the way it was copied from The Cheyenne Indians, I don’t think we would have be having this conversation.
I think Katie’s right, it’s Plaguerism. Certainly seems like a plague. (I’m not sure if that was a typo or deliberate, but I love it)
I’m amazed at the level of eeriness. I’m impressed with the amount and speed of research and look forward to the ever unfolding of this story. Please let there be more unfolding!!
Spamword: quality65
Absolutely Top Quality!
said on...“One of the interesting points that came up during my off-line conversation was the fact that we couldn’t recall ever seeing a bibliography or sources cited in other historicals, with the exception of some mention in forward or acknowledgements.”
Georgette Heyer had a huge bibliography at the end of ‘The Spanish Bride’ - though perhaps that’s an exception, as the story is based on a real life couple.
I’m fairly sure Heyer also tells the reader that Wellington’s lines in the book are all copied from his writings.
But even if most books don’t have bibliographies, you routinely read authors crediting other works they’ve quoted from or thanking those whose work they drew on - to quote from one book I own: ‘Anyone who has read into this time and place will realise how much the present work owes to...’
One of the interesting points that came up during my off-line conversation was the fact that we couldn’t recall ever seeing a bibliography or sources cited in other historicals
I recently read a couple of Susan Johnson’s books and enjoyed how she handled citations - superscript numerals in the text correspond to notes at the end of the books wherein she cites sources and/or tells little stories related to the historical bon mot at hand. I don’t see why that would be such a hard/horrible practice for anyone to adopt who wants to.
I’ve never read any Cassie Edwards, which is perhaps why I can’t get the thought out of my mind that it seems like she had the attitude that she was writing a 4th grade book report with each of her books. I get the feeling that she didn’t quite understand why such close quoting of source materials is considered so heinous. But perhaps accusing her of stupidity is too kind? I’ll be interested to see if/how she responds.
Three cheers, bitches! I’m shocked that no one caught this plagiarism before and I’m doubly shocked that people are willing to accept the plagiarism as prose. Good gravy, people! I’m so flabbergasted that I can barely string together a coherent sentence!
Also, Emt: The JK Rowling incident is nothing like this one. The woman who was claiming that Rowling plagiarized her “had lied and altered documents to support her case” (from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2268024.stm).
said on...Beyond the fact that plagiarism is ethically wrong, this case highlights so many of the problems that plagiarism causes:
1) Sudden and obvious but inappropriate changes in authorial voice, leading to a disjointed narrative
2) Reliance on outside sources to word the story. Basic, factual information can easily be rewritten in an author’s own voice; direct quotations are a lazy way to present such information, and the author forfeits a chance to further develop the tone of her story. Even if she had cited her sources appropriately, the amount of near-direct or directly-quoted material requiring quotation marks would indicate that she has not put much thought into the conception or wording of the background information in her own book. The proper way to use sources in fiction that is not meant as a parody or pastiche is to read the source but to rewrite any unique inspiration from that source in your own language (not just rewording, but constructing new prose: you reference the other author’s idea, not their sentence construction), then indicate the sources of research in an acknowledgments section.
3) Reliance on sources that are easily accessible and thus, for the most part, outdated. This may be due to convenience, or maybe she deliberately chose sources that are out of copyright, but the antiquated language of her sources adds further to the inconsistent authorial voice. Also, much of the material she uses has been updated and/or corrected by more recent scholarship. The dated sources she uses contribute to the romanticized (and in my mind, offensive) depiction of cultures in her books.
Even beyond the question of morally right vs. morally wrong, plagiarism often, as in this case, means the work produced is shoddy on its own merits - not just because the audience has been notified of the plagiarism, but as a result of a writing process engendered by plagiarism.
George MacDonald Fraser of the Flashman novels cites PAGES of sources for his works.
And he managed to not do any block/copy/paste jobs in any of his ripping yarns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman
But that’s the difference between a GOOD WRITER and a hack.
How about someone slip this nugget to the New York Times?
Or are they still bleeding from their own “P” word debacle with that “reporter”?
What drugs are CE fans taking that they think she’s good? I want some!
said on...First: Gratz to the Bitches for garnering a mention on GalleyCat!
Romance Novelist’s Echoes of Earlier Authors Compiled
Second: I’m curious if anyone knows how lapsed copyrights would affect the legality of her appropriation of passages from certain texts. For example, two of the texts mentioned today with publishing dates in the early 1900s had lapsed copyrights prior to CE plagiarizing them. I am wondering if she’s gonna get out of answering for the text grabs because of lapsed copyright issues. Anyone have any idea? This whole thing is unethical as all get out. It makes me sad.
said on...Holy Moses in a drifting waterproof reed basket!!! This is just NOT right.
Many other more eloquent people have stated how I (personally) feel about this whole affair (plagiarism = BAD) and not being a writer (just an admirer of their works) I still felt the need to post my feelings/reaction, such as they are.
WOW (told you I am not a writer). This is not a good WOW, but an ‘I’m feeling really amazed and confused’ kind of WOW.
Amazed on how CE took the descriptions from these other texts and authors, word for word, and used them in her books.
And (I’m assuming here) thought this was OK.
And kept doing it. (See Candy’s previous post RE: Over 100 books published)
Confused about this moral dilemma she doesn’t seem to have (maybe I am reading more into this than others). If she doesn’t think this is wrong, wrong, wrong, then maybe she doesn’t know the meaning of the word Plagiarism?
‘WOW’ just seems to sum it up for me.
I also wanted give kudos to the SB’s, Kate and Nikki who found all of this mess and did all the (tedious) work researching the facts.
Great Job Ladies!!
P.S. I am all for donating each of you a bottle of a pain reliever and antacid of your choice, for having to wade through all the muck.
Bing, bing, bing on point #3, sazzat. As a librarian, I can tell you the amount of information and old fiction and scholarship is nearly endless. It is the previous lack of access that allowed plagarism to go on undetected. Google Books making material out of copyright easily a) accessible and b) searchable is what blows this wide open now. That and those algorithm writing analysis tools.
sazzat wrote:
Beyond the fact that plagiarism is ethically wrong, this case highlights so many of the problems that plagiarism causes:
1) Sudden and obvious but inappropriate changes in authorial voice, leading to a disjointed narrative
This bugs the hell out of me. How could her editor not see this? If a reader can simply pick up a book and immediately realize something is very wrong with certain passages, then how come an editor couldn’t pick it up? I am not saying that it’s the editor’s fault. But damn.
submit word: position46 (tried that last night!)
Holy plagiarism, Batman!
Author’s Note: For this comment, I paraphrased a popular catchphrase from the Batman mythology, copyrighted by DC Comics.
See how easy that was, Cassie?
At the same time, I can’t help but think of that popular paranormal romantic comedy book that takes several comedic lines sputtered by the heroine from an online dictionary of bizarre French phrases without acknowledging the source. It’s interesting how dumb some authors suspect readers of being.
The work being out of copyright doesn’t erase the issue of plagiarism--it means that there may be no one with rights to ask for monetary damages. Cassie Edwards’ systematic and widespread copying of source material is not covered under the doctine of fair use.
Huge cheers to the Bitches and the Bitchery for exposing this. Man, this is...amazing. Terrible. Shocking.
I will say this for Ms. Edwards, though. At least she hasn’t shown up here to threaten everyone with “Wicca curses”.
said on...George MacDonald Fraser, RIP. (He just passed away earlier this week.)
I love you, Teddy Pig because your cowbell comment made me crack up. More cowbell!
But back to the seriousness of this topic. A real-life example that came to mind for me (that I don’t believe I’ve seen mentioned in the comments yet) was the two cases brought against Dan Brown over copyright infringement in The DaVinci Code. (Source: Dan Brown’s Wikipedia page)
Brown was accused of lifting ideas, not even actual words, from a particular source material that he not only acknowledged as a source but then used the two source material author’s names as an actual character in the book. (The authors were Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Brown named a character Leigh Teabing--Thanks Wikipedia--Teabing is obviously an anagram of “Baigent” and the character of Leigh Teabing actually references the Baigent/Leigh book in The DaVinci Code.)
But still they sued him for copyright infringement (in Britain) and they lost. Brown cited their work as a source and, as we are discussing, did not plagiarize by stealing their words, simply used the information given in their book in his own, unique, way.
So. Since Edwards never pulled a Dan Brown and not once bothered to acknowledge source material (if that’s a slight on the publisher because they didn’t want to bother publishing a bibliography then that would be interesting) BUT she did more than just use source material, as we’re all discussing. She flat-out plagiarized and THAT is inexcusable.
Has anybody attempted to contact the authors and pubs of the materials from which Edwards stole? I’ve got a slow day at work today and would be glad to use my time to try and track down some email addresses of some of these people. If it were me, and my non-fiction work, I would like to be notified that a beautiful phalanx of Bitches had uncovered a theft of my work.
I don’t believe the romance genre will suffer because of this because romance readers/writers outed her. I think, based upon the comments before me, this has infuriated a lot of people.
All I want to know is what happens now? I’m no lawyer. This has to be brought to the attention of her publisher (if it hasn’t already) and some action must be taken. Whatever happens, Cassie Edwards needs to explain herself.
How could her editor not see this? If a reader can simply pick up a book and immediately realize something is very wrong with certain passages, then how come an editor couldn’t pick it up?
One person out of many thousands realized something was wrong. As I’ve said before both of our very Smart Bitches read these books without immediately screaming “Plagiarism!!!” Let’s not overstate the obviousness.
I can’t help but think of that popular paranormal romantic comedy book that takes several comedic lines sputtered by the heroine from an online dictionary of bizarre French phrases without acknowledging the source. It’s interesting how dumb some authors suspect readers of being.
This sounds like a very gray area to me. It’s a dictionary of French phrases, which means the phrases are public knowledge (in France). I don’t cite the dictionaries I use. At most this would’ve called for an acknowledgement (in a work of fiction), as far as I can tell. Is there something more damning about the example?
Man, I get a cold and miss everything. My jaw seems to be hanging permanently open this morning. Every time I think it can’t get any worse *BANG* it so gets worse.
My hat is off to the SBs for putting this issue FIRMLY in the spotlight where it BELONGS.
What I remember from when the nuns were smacking my classmates and me over the head with our English textbooks, you CAN reword it, but rewording doesn’t mean removing one or two words from the material. It means reworking it to get the point across without using the same exact words.
I think (and that’s always a bad thing) that the passage on page 49 of Savage Longings could have read:
The root digger was a thin pointed tool made from the wood of the ash tree that could be utilized in the extraction of ground roots. A protective grip existed on one end while the tip was strengthened with the heat from the fire.
If it had (rather than the way it was copied from The Cheyenne Indians, I don’t think we would have be having this conversation.
Noonie makes an excellent point… because if she HAD reworded she wouldn’t have been found by using Google.
She MAY have come up when searching for the same topics, but not for the same words.
It was the fact, that her points of similarity were so exact which lead to her getting busted.
So the new rule is if you doubt the quality of you “rephrasing” then Google… if it comes back to you don’t take it for it is not yours ~A
As a reader, this situation and this author seems to perpetuate the misconception that romance readers are ignorant, borderline illiterate, bored housewives who have no life and romance authors aren’t “real” authors ,anyone could do it. It’s not “real” literature. It’s trash!
That view has irked me since I started reading romance at 12 years old.
I agree with a lot of commenters, it is ultimately the authors crime but gee whiz it is so MUCH by volume why the heck hasn’t it been caught before?
said on...It probably hasn’t been noticed before because there wasn’t a crossover between the material - the people reading old academic material weren’t reading Cassie Edwards and vice versa. And, until now, no one searched for the language.
My college was very serious about plagairism and, my first year, everyone was very careful about citing sources and making it clear where specific information came from in writing papers. After that first year we were still careful about citing, but were more comfortable with what we were doing.
I think using the information is one thing, but lifting entire chunks of text is wrong.
I’m still boggled by the ferrets, though. (seriously - ferrets?)
Laura, I’m not a lawyer either, but whether she faces any legal repercussions from anyone but her own publisher depends on whether she plagiarized anything under copyright, and *that* depends on where the books were published, by whom, and in what year.
Plagiarism and copyright violation are two different things. Copyright violations can be unintentional (see George Harrison) or in good faith. Plagiarism can be neither.
Plagiarism can easily exist in the absence of copyright and copyright violation can exist in the absence of plagiarism. Sometimes people confuse the two because copyright laws can be used to stop plagiarism.
Damn! That’s ballsy. No wonder her books were so bad, though. No one really talks like that.
said on...I’d just like to underscore KatieW’s point. The Dan Brown case is probably one of the most relevant here--his author’s note was sufficient to give credit for his borrowings from the source text.
Had Edwards done two things: 1) learned the art of the graceful paraphrase/rewrite and 2) added an author’s note saying where she got some of her ideas, or even put the book in the acknowledgments, we would not be having this discussion.
It’s not that she needs a detailed bibliography. She needds to learn to rework ideas and give credit where credit is due.
But what can we expect from someone who capitalizes on the racist myth of the “noble savage”?
I have to agree with Toddson about there not being much crossover audience with the material. Unless you were writing an academic paper on the poor representation of Native American peoples in modern American fiction vs. the historical representation in modern American prose, it’s not something that would come up easily.
Honestly, who reads a Cassie Edwards book that CLOSELY? How many reviewers missed what The Bitches and Co. stumbled upon? Especially after 100 of them! After the fourteenth savage runs off with a white-breasted maiden with flowing hair, you know the formula and you just accept it all on a surface level and keep thumbing through the pages.
Which may be what CE was banking on.
The saddest part (IMO) is that it explains a lot about why CE’s books are so poorly written. Anyone with a sense of prose, with an ear for dialogue, and with a head for plot- and character-development could never snick sentences wholesale.
Real fiction writers don’t write that way. The characters and narrators have their own voices, and the writer who isn’t tuned to that is just typing, not writing. Even media-tie-in novelists “feel” their characters instead of constructing them from parts. (Or at least the MTI novelists I know say that.)
I don’t think I could plagiarize passages if I tried. Aside from all moral issues, it just wouldn’t feel like writing.
A ways back, Jenny said: Maybe I’m just a product of this culture, but if you turn to source material for research, read it, incorporate it into your mental knowledge base, and then rewrite that information in your book in your own - or, more accurately, the character’s - words, how is that wrong? It would be like saying you can know the stuff but could never use it.
-->But that’s not what CE did. She quoted verbatim, or so close to verbatim it’s clear that she wasn’t working from internalized knowledge.
If you’re looking at your source material while writing your fiction, then you’re doing it wrong.
said on...Reading this has left a heavy lump in the pit of my stomach. It’s beyond sad. I know that plagiarism is generally viewed as a civil offense, and the aggrieved party must seek redress in a civil suit. At what point does this rise to theft?
said on...While CE probably can’t be sued for copyright infringement because some of the source material is so hold, she’s still a plagiarist.
Less harm on the checkbook in the short term but, assuming this plagiarism issues expands beyond the internet blogs, it could have a huge affect on her future sales. I’m very interested to see what her publishers say.
As for her fans defending her, I could understand if it was just one instance in one book. I’d be willing to chalk it up to an honest mistake in that case, but clearly it’s in way more than just one of her books and it’s more than one instance in each book. I’m really not sure how anyone can justify that or explain it away (note: I’m sure people are trying, but I’m pretty sure they won’t succeed).
said on...You’ve made the news!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/527541/romance_author_cassie_edwards_under.html
Rats--I posted a link, but it doesn’t show the funny picture.
Here’s the thread it’s on at Absolute Write in their Romance & Womens Fiction forum:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88553
You’ll know the pic when you see it.
Heee.
said on...I guess what makes me angry (outside of the P word) is that other authors’ work has been labeled bad through no fault of their own because of CE and her actions. And in reality, the writing that we’ve faulted is not bad (at least in my unprofessional opinion) in the original context. Were I to come across it when reading a non fiction work, most of it wouldn’t even give me pause.
You can tell I’m the mother of toddlers, because as I was reading more and more of the passages, I could hear Sesame Street characters singing ‘One of these things is not like the others...’
That explains why the site has been slowing down! Lots of traffic.
said on...I’m no expert, but my understanding is that works published before 1925 are in the public domain. What that means is that you don’t have to pay anyone for the right to quote the material because it’s no longer protected under copyright. As someone said earlier, you still need to attribute a quote, whether it’s copyrighted or not.
Did Cassie Edwards write her own books, or did she have a writing team who crafted the text based in her general plot ideas?
Question for the writers here: does a romance novel undergo a permissions vet prior to publication? I work in non-fiction so every book is thoroughly reviewed for potential permissions issues.
JaneyD, Publishers Weekly didn’t have any mention of this in today’s PW Daily. Neither did Publishers Lunch.
It’s not plagiarism, it’s research.
Hey I have an “IDEA”!
Since Ms Edwards has written what? over 100 books? She and her publishers should compile a “ Savage Companion” book.
You know… ala “outlandish companion “ or “ dark hunter companion”
Instead of explaining the world building, this “companion” can credit and acknowledge the alleged plagarised materials.
Most of the work is already done here, give it a few more days and voila! All done, just gotta polish it up and pick out a nice bodice ripping cover. LOL
I’m brilliant..shouldn’t someone be paying me for this shit?
I think Katie’s right, it’s Plaguerism. Certainly seems like a plague. (I’m not sure if that was a typo or deliberate, but I love it) [\quote]It started out a malapropism, on a paper (interestingly enough, on plagiarism among high school students). My teacher circled it and wrote in her red pen next to it “Quite correct, a pox on the buggers!” and didn’t count me off for it. So even though when pressed I can properly spell it, I generally don’t. :-)
And the interesting part of this whole kerfaffle (at least to me), is who is reading this woman’s tripe, anyway? Is she really one of the best sellers? I’m still just boggled by this--Can no one else see the stilted prose? The poorly done infodumping that sounds only slightly less interesting than a four hour lecture on American civic policy regarding gum on public benches? Is it any surprise that no one has noticed this until now when no one I know who’s likely to care about things like intellectual property would bother reading her uncomfortable dialogue? I agree, her editor at least should have noticed, but if you were her editor (assigned by the publishing house) would *you* read this crap too closely?
Perhaps she was confused on the copyright law as to the 75 years from publication vs 75 years from the death of the author bit of it. Actually, hasn’t the law been extended now to include the first generation of the writer/creators’ heirs? I know there was some big buggerup about something written in the 20’s and how the law changed to make someone who used it incorrectly in 1990 some-odd pay a lot of money.
It’s been a while since I studied copyright....
01.08.08 at 06:41 AM |