Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Now I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for this kid, though the 500K advance keeps me from feeling too sorry.

People ask me all the time if I’ve read so-and-so, who writes Florida historical novels.  And I always respond, truthfully, that I don’t read any other author’s Florida based historicals because I don’t want to accidentally lift phrasing or be accused of borrowing scenes or characters.

It can happen even when you don’t intend it--a particular turn of phrase will stick with you, and it shows up in your own work.  Heck, one of a repeat author’s biggest problems is not using your own phrasing so repetitively that readers notice it!

I’m sure I’m missing out on some quality reading, but I sleep better at night knowing I’m not risking unconscious borrowing.

Okay, here´s what I don´t get:  according to one of the NYT articles, the publishing contract is between Alloy and Little Brown, NOT Viswanathan and the publisher.  Can anyone explain the significance of this (I don´t think it´s a consent issue, since Alloy isn´t her legal guardian) and what it means in terms of legal authorship and advance/royalties distribution??

And am I the only one who isn´t convinced Viswanathan actually wrote this thing herself?  The same NYT article referred to extensive editing, especially by Little Brown´s people.

I don´t see Viswanathan as a victim in this, but I wonder if she´s getting more ¨credit¨ than she deserves on ALL counts.

Yeah well, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t. I have a friend who used to work in publishing and she reckons you’re more likely to have a book published if you’re a winsome young Natasha who can ensure glowing perve-fests in the papers (thus increasing sales) even if the book is rubbish, than produce a modern day Beowulf if you’re a fifty-something former librarian.

Well, I found some article today saying she most likely didn’t get much of that 500,000- Alloy probably ate a lot of it.

Anyway… good lord.

I keep wondering, if there are so many similarities to well known authors that your average reader is picking up on it, why didn’t the editor pick up on it? 

Surely the editor would have noticed something was amiss?  Is that editor held accountable in any way?

Cause I think the “editor” wrote the bloody thing! Hence the shared copyright and the huge advance.

“Heck, one of a repeat author’s biggest problems is not using your own phrasing so repetitively that readers notice it!”

Could someone please introduced this concept to Laurell K Hamiltom. Please.  Please.  Pleeeeeeeeaaase.

Hamilton.

gotta learn to think slower to keep up with my typing skills.

[G] I understand, J-me.  I have felt your pain with certain authors.  On the other hand, some turn it into an artform. When you read a Nora Roberts “J.D. Robb” book now you look for the scene where Eve Dallas confronts the butler and flicks him off. In each book. That’s part of the fun of using the same characters over and over.

Of course, “Robb” does it with panache.  With some authors it’s just...tedious.

Surely we, as readers, can sue somebody over this.

And someone needs to tell Feehan about the overused phrases, too.  She’s brain-crunchingly repetitive.  I suppose she “can do no other.” Oy.

And you know, all this is starting to sound pretty good to me.  I have a book due on the 15th and am starting to panic about that, but hey, no problem.  I’ll just find another futuristic-erotic-advanced-human-assassin-hunka-love meets-dainty-yet-still-kickass-senator-chick and kidnaps-her-into-the-poisoned-wastelands-to-foil-her-enemies whilst-they-fall-in-luuuuurve(tm) and-have-hot-humpty-sex book, and just copy chunks from that. 

Of course, finding that book might take longer than writing the thing.  Damn it.  I need to write coming-of-age shit.  It’s clearly much easier to copy.

Feehan doesn’t just overuse her own phrases, she overuses her own plots.

And this whole mess with “Opal” is exactly why an author shouldn’t edit their own books.  Giving the chick the benefit of the doubt, and trying really hard to pretend that it was unintentional influence and she didn’t even realize she did it, then that shows exactly why an outside editor is so important.  Or even going with logic and saying she did plagiarize knowingly is an example of why an outside editor is so important from the other angle.

The thing is, you’re assuming that the editor isn’t, in fact, the one who DID the plagiarizing. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m seeing plots where none exist . . . but I do have to wonder if the “editor” wasn’t the one who “wrote” this lovely piece of cobbled together crap.

Although the passages in the “Opal” book are too similar to be coincidence or an accident, I can’t help but wonder that if I sat down right now to write a romance novel, how much of it would be Nora Roberts’ work? I’ve read almost all of her books, surely some parts of them must be in my subconscious somewhere. Can one unconsciously “internalize” and accidentally reuse another author’s work? And would an editor, who reads god only knows how many books a year, catch it if I did?

This whole fiasco has really got me thinking.

“The thing is, you’re assuming that the editor isn’t, in fact, the one who DID the plagiarizing. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m seeing plots where none exist . . . but I do have to wonder if the “editor” wasn’t the one who “wrote” this lovely piece of cobbled together crap.”

So here´s my question:  where is the bright line rule distinguishing the intellectual dishonesty of passing off someone else´s work as your own (aka plagiarism) and the kind of corporate publishing and packaging that Alloy and others carry out?  Why is one embraceable and the other excerable?  I actually think I find the kind of business Alloy’s in to be much more of an eroding force to the integrity of literate, independent, and intelligent fiction than I do the actions of one (ALLEGED) plagiarizer.

Does the author have the final word on the book or the editor?  In this case, are they one and the same or are they 2 different people? 

I think there could be something to the editor theory, especially if the editor is one of the Alloy people.  Although I have a hard time understanding what the editor gains from taking something completely original and throwing in poorly hidden rip-offs from another writer. 

If the passages are plagiarized, it seems to me the author stands to gain more than anyone else (providing she gets away with it).

Why is one embraceable and the other excerable?

I’m not sure I understand the question? Which one are you saying is which?

In my book: plagiarism = bad; book packagers creating false product = bad.

Does the author have the final word on the book or the editor?

That would depend on the contract. The way it usually works is that the editor has the final say concerning deciding if what has been turned in is publishable. The writer has final say over the manuscript, and can always return the advance and withdraw the book if they can’t reach an editorial compromise. This does happen (but not very often).

I have no idea what goes on with Alloy/17th Street, but everything I’ve read about them sets off my “spidey sense”.

I haven’t been following every twist of the situation, but the Harvard Independent published an article the other day uncovering the fact that the packager has been involved in a plagiarism suit before.  (I’m too lazy to dig up the link.) It settled out of court with a confidentiality clause, so nobody can uncover what exactly happened, but they hired a woman to write a book for Random House, RH rejected it, the packager promised to get a new book written by a different author, and then turned in a manuscript with pretty much an identical plot.  If the copied bits had been in the outline they gave the original writer, they could have proved it with trivial ease, but they didn’t; they just settled out of court.

It’s a different plagiarism scenario . . . but it’s interesting that the packager’s been in plagiarism trouble before.

sara g said, ”Can one unconsciously ‘internalize’ and accidentally reuse another author’s work?>”

IMO, it can happen unintentionally with fragments of stories: pieces of scenes, phrases, character traits, descriptions. Memory is such a huge magpie’s nest of nifty, shiny objects that it can be difficult to remember if you picked up a bit of information from somewhere or if you invented it yourself. That’s why many writers, myself included, are careful not to read in the genres they write, at least not while in certain stages of working on a story.

To me, some of the similarities between Opal and the other two books seemed like the result of deliberate plagiarism, while others looked accidental. My gut feeling is that some intentional reuse/rewording went on.

P.S. And by pieces of scenes, I mean a general order of how things happened, NOT a word-for-word scene.

Honestly, the editor and publisher have a LOT more to lose by plagiarizing successful, NYT writers than college freshman who not only has to write this, like, 80,000 word novel but who also has midterms and final papers and other, like, important school stuff hanging over her head.  And even Harvard has some semblance of a student social life.  Dude, deadlines are, like, easy when there’s a book in front of you and all you have to do is copy a few passages while substituting a few words here and there.

The editors and publishers and, yes, even Alloy are probably much more aware of the consequences of plagiarism in the publishing world than the author.  After all, it costs beaucoup bucks to pull and pulp books, not to mention all the money lost in printing the book.

Now, if the editor is revealed to be a teenager who has never really edited a book in her life and thinks this is the way the business works then yeah, I’d buy that the editor did it.  In the library.  With a lead pipe.

But the plagiarism is so blatant, and is taken from so many well-known and well-read novels, I don’t buy there exists an editor that stupid.  Not even at Alloy, which, after all, is a very successful company in the YA market and had a big stake in the novel’s success.  They’re minus one movie deal, for example. 

I could be wrong, of course.

“But the plagiarism is so blatant, and is taken from so many well-known and well-read novels, I don’t buy there exists an editor that stupid.”

And yet, by Little Brown’s own admission, this novel was more heavily edited than usual.  So why weren’t these oh so well known passsages caught then?  There are lots of things that don’t line up in this situation, which is what makes me really skeptical that we have anywhere near the whole story on this.

“I’m not sure I understand the question? Which one are you saying is which?”

I get the impression that some folks are less horrified by the idea that genre fiction might be so cynically corporatized that readers are viewed as nothing more than consumers of derivative pulp than they are by the alleged plagiarism of one young author.  And I personally think that the increasing corporatization of genre fiction is far more corrosive to the reputation of these genres—let alone their vitality and integrity as creative works of original origin—than 40 paragraphs and one Harvard sophomore.

“by Little Brown’s own admission, this novel was more heavily edited than usual.  So why weren’t these oh so well known passsages caught then?  There are lots of things that don’t line up in this situation, which is what makes me really skeptical that we have anywhere near the whole story on this.”

Which is why I think Kaayva did the Memorex thing all on her own.  Easy to copy from best-selling novels on the desk in front of you.  Less easy to spot the cloned passaged unless you are an eagle-eyed fan of said best-selling novels.  And if your author signs an affadavit stating the work is her own, why would the editor be on the lookout for disguised McCafferty, Cabot and Kinsella prose?

There are teen authors capable of telling a story in their own words.  Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon.  Zoe Trope, who wrote a memoir, Please Don’t Kill the Freshman.  Nick Paolini, who wrote Twelve.  Robyn Schneider is a Barnard sophmore whose debut novel is coming out in January.  So why should the editor suspect that something is rotten in Cambridge in this case?

On the other hand, the plagiarism is such a stupid thing to do, I just have a hard time believing that any adult professional would think this is a stunt worth pulling.  An editor has (I hope) more awareness of the business, and the costs to his/her company should shady doings be revealed.  An editor would be aware that McCafferty, Cabot and Kinsella sell very well to the same audience targeted by Opal Mehta, and that the aped words therefore have a high chance of being spotted. An editor might even remember Dailey/Roberts.

But a teenager, under academic and deadline pressure, living away from home for probably the first time in her life, thrust into a new lifestyle and culture and surrounded by people just as smart and talented and accomplished, if not more so, than her?  Yeah, this is the precisely the type of stupidity I can see happening.

But again, I could be wrong.

Yes, I do agree that there are talented teen writers full to bursting with original ideas and talent to spare. But to bring Christopher Paolini into the mix is like inviting Miss Viswanathan to a dinner party attended by Dickens, Steinbeck, and Poe.
Chris Paolini’s books “Eragon” and “Eldest” are frighteningly unoriginal, padded with lines and plot points that ring eerily familiar from other works of fantasy fiction, such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Dragonriders of Pern, the Wheel of Time series, the Belgariad, and others.
Mr. Paolini wrote the book, then turned it over to his parents who self-published it, then was picked up by Knopf, who should’ve done more in the way of editing before ever putting the book out on store shelves.
If anything, these cases teach us how little publishing companies care about the authors or the writing itself. All they want to hear is the jangle of the cash register and the bustle of ticket sales when said books make it all the way to the cineplex.

“If anything, these cases teach us how little publishing companies care about the authors or the writing itself. All they want to hear is the jangle of the cash register and the bustle of ticket sales when said books make it all the way to the cineplex.”

This is what I have taken away from all this, as well.  I KNOW publishing is a business, but I’m nowhere near ready to concede that pushing books is substantively equivalent to pushing potato chips or cell phones.

Chris Paolini’s books “Eragon” and “Eldest” are frighteningly unoriginal, padded with lines and plot points that ring eerily familiar from other works of fantasy fiction....

Thank god I’m not the only one who noticed this.  All I hear are rave reviews.  I get the kid’s positive reactions - they usually haven’t read the books he steals from - but the adults annoy me.

Honestly, the editor and publisher have a LOT more to lose by plagiarizing successful, NYT writers than college freshman who not only has to write this, like, 80,000 word novel but who also has midterms and final papers and other, like, important school stuff hanging over her head.

Yeah, that’s kinda my thinking too.  After all, Paolini took a year off between finishing high school and starting college to finish Eragon, and that obviously still needed work.