# Plagiarism rocks romance world! Again! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2008, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610 "2008-01-23T01:57:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Solfy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Solfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Solfy)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/81 "2008-01-24T16:33:12Z")
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir] The Smart Set all have Ferret Butlers nowadays, darling. [/QUOTE] Yes, but do they have a sheen? [QUOTE=Ghanima] Shawneequa laid back, the sheen of love still heavy across her beasts. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/82 "2008-01-24T16:35:12Z")
[QUOTE=Solfy] Yes, but do they have a sheen? [/QUOTE] Yeah, probably Charlie, knowing him. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/83 "2008-01-24T17:06:14Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] Oh, I won’t deny that most people would love $5.7 million. However, Edwards has been writing for 25 years, so that averages out at $228,000 per year. Nice money, more than most writers make, but hardly wealth in this day and age. [/QUOTE] Well, actually, it might well be. Most starting out romance writers sell their books for very little – I have heard as little as $100, though $500 is more common for a total unknown. I don’t have any idea where Edwards started out, but we can assume her advance was very little. Unless her first book immediately sold half a million copies, she probably had to spend a few years working her way up the food chain. Once her books starting getting very high sales figures, she probably had an agent who negotiated better deals for her, as she was undoubtedly a star. The publisher needed her more than she needed a given publisher at that point, as any romance with her name on is was going to be worth $2.5 million in sales to them. I’m betting she got a MUCH better than average deal in her later years. My guess is her income once her books took off was WELL in excess of $228,000. And by the standards of romance writers, or writers generally, most of whom do not earn enough to make a living, she won the fucking lottery, man. She DEFINITELY profited, and in a big way, from the books. It’s an irrelevant point, as has been pointed out. My initial thought was that she was some struggling romance hack who barely eked out a living with the books and could almost be said to be a hobbyist, and whose borrowings could be viewed more as sad than evil. I was wrong about that. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/84 "2008-01-24T17:37:17Z")
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl] You think there’s a moral, ethical, or legal difference between stealing non-fiction work and fictional work? [/quote] Yes, I do, in terms of ethics. Specifically, I think borrowing text from a nonfiction work to put into a fictional work is less egregious than borrowing text from a fictional work, because you’ve got to do SOME massaging of the nonfictional text to make it work in a fictional context, most of the time, as many of the posters here have had so much fun pointing out with regard to ferret love. You just dump it in there, it sounds strange. Which is why it isn’t often done. Futhermore, when you borrow someone else’s fiction to make into YOUR fiction it’s a more straightforward appropriation. When a person writes a nonfiction work about the Kiawa Indians or native american soup ladles, it’s presumably to inform others about these things. Fiction writing has a long tradition of doing research and incorporating it into their works. Most writers are just smart enough, or more to the point, enough of a craftsman, to use their own words to incorporate the information they’ve learned smoothly into their narrative, which tends to both enrich the story and hide the origins of the research. I’m sure there are a LOT of writers whom you can easily tell what books they’ve read as research if you’re familiar with what’s been written in the field. Are they plagiarists? Of course not. It’s only copying the original’s exact words, and in bulk, that gets you in trouble. I have already conceded that Edwards appears to have copies passages word for word from various sources, though some of the “plagiarism” sites in the master pdf are clearly instances of “reaching” by the researchers, as pointed out in my cite. The only question remaining is, did Edwards borrow enough text within the context of her 300+ page novel so that her work is more than marginally enhanced by the borrowing? I’m not satisfied that she has, as yet. However, I am sure expert lawyers are conducting the same research that the smartbitches have done, and if they find sufficient grounds, i.e., enough to make the publisher want to settle rather than fight, they’ll be making their arguments in the form of lawsuits. > [@](#): > > Wow. Just wow. A powerful argument, indeed. > [@](#): > > Well, she _did_ steal from plenty of fictional pieces of work, including **Laughing Boy** and **Hiawatha**. As I said, “lawyers” though the smidgen that’s been cited from Hiawatha isn’t exactly impressive. > [@](#): > > Plus, citing your work without credit on a website isn’t even in the same league as taking your work and publishing it in a book and profiting from it. I didn’t say “citing.” I said republishing on anther website. It’s EXACTLY the same thing. I sell my books for profit, however meager, and they stole the words. I got them to give me credit, converting a loss into free advertising. > [@](#): > > Furthermore, plagiarism isn’t just about the words used. Plagiarism includes stealing words and _information_. Actually, a long standing element of copyright law is that no one can copyright a fact. So, it’s not about information. > [@](#): > > If it was just research, she should have included the references in her acknowledgments, which is easy as pie when you’re writing a book. She definitely should have done that. It would have enriched her readers’ experience to have cites from where she got her information. > [@](#): > > Your examples don’t prove anything except that she established a pattern of lifting information if not exact wording. That’s plagiarism. Can’t you see that? Since you can’t copyright a fact, no it’s not plagiarism. Sorry, dollface, it’s curtains for you. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/85 "2008-01-24T17:54:06Z")
Copyright infringement is not the same as plagiarism. People who are guilty of plagiarism may be guilty of copyright infringement, but not always and not in every situation; therefore, copyright law has nothing to do with what ethically counts as plagiarism. Sorry, dollface, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. [Plagiarism in the Fiction Community](http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/01/22/defining-the-meaning-of-plagiarism-for-the-fiction-community/) and [Plagiarism is a Community Issue](http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/01/08/plagiarism-is-a-community-issue/) are pretty good explanations about why you’re pretty much wrong. But it seems you aren’t clear on what plagiarism even is (It really isn’t synonymous with copyright infringement or has anything to do with copyright). In case you don’t want to follow the links, I’ll pull the definition of plagiarism they provide. > [@](#): > > “Plagiarism is the academic and literary equivalent of robbery, taking somebody else’s property. If you copy somebody’s test answers, take an essay from a magazine and pass it off as your own, lift a well-phrased sentence or two and include them without crediting the author or using quotation marks, **or even pass off somebody’s good ideas as examples of your own genius,** you are guilty of intellectual thievery. If you are caught you should expect punishment or contempt or both.” Quote from Robert M. Gorrell and Charlton Laid, Modern English Handbook, 6th edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 71. WRITING WITH SOURCES: A Guide for Harvard Students, by Gordon Harvey, Expository Writing Program, Copyright 1995. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/86 "2008-01-24T18:11:22Z")
I was appalled at how many people who commented on the original blog showed a complete lack of knowledge of writing and the publishing industry. One of the things they were most confused over was the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. Thank you **pepperlandgirl** for fighting ignorance on this subject. In the writing world, plagiarism is the worst sin. All that writers have are their own original words on a blank sheet of paper. If you start with the page not blank by stealing somebody else’s words you have broken your compact with your audience. Everything you do is tainted. If the accusations are true, and at this point it’s still “if,” Edwards should be bounced from the profession. She probably will be, in that no publisher would be willing to take her on after this. I said before I’m the anti-Evil Captor when it comes to plagiarism and I thank him for making the difference between us so clear and absolute. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/87 "2008-01-24T19:09:05Z")
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl] Sorry, dollface, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. [/QUOTE] When has that stopped him before? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/88 "2008-01-24T23:29:35Z")
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl] Copyright infringement is not the same as plagiarism. People who are guilty of plagiarism may be guilty of copyright infringement, but not always and not in every situation; therefore, copyright law has nothing to do with what ethically counts as plagiarism. Sorry, dollface, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. [/quote] So the goalposts are over THERE now, are they, dollface? First it’s whether Cassie copied stuff, now it’s whether that constitutes plagiarism or copyright infringement? Interesting. And although they’re not EXACTLY the same thing, they’re pretty durned similar in many respects. And you can’t plagiarize a fact, either. If the Kiawa or whomever made ladles out of cherrywood, you can’t claim copyright or any kind of ownership of that information, any more than you can claim ownership of the fact that sun is a atomic fireball floating in space. Go ahead and try, I dare ya! Also, the source you provided started their article by stating that there is no commonly understood definition of plagiarism, then started opinionating about what they thought plagiarism ought to mean. I guess this whole thread is pointless, it being about plagiarism and all, which there is no commonly understood definition for. Also, also vik an interstellar toothbrush (Monty Python’s gonna sue my ass!) it was said that about all you could do to plagiarists was shun them. Well, I gotta tell ya, $5.7 million (or whatever, I bet it’s more than that) can make up for an awful llot of shunning. I mean a little old lady like Cassie Edwards can buy an awful lot of cat food and potting soil for that kind of money, if you know what I mean. And I think you do. At least a copyright infrignment lawsuit will make things a little painful for Ms. Edwards if she is indeed guilty. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/89 "2008-01-24T23:32:26Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] I said before I’m the anti-Evil Captor when it comes to plagiarism and I thank him for making the difference between us so clear and absolute. [/QUOTE] OK, wiseacre, since you’re the anti-Evil Captor, suppose you tell us all what the Evil Captor position on plagiarism is. I’m all ears. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/90 "2008-01-25T01:05:15Z")
_You_ are the one who brought up the differences between plagiarism and copyright infringement with this gem > [@](#): > > Actually, a long standing element of copyright law is that no one can copyright a fact. So, it’s not about information. I did not move the goal posts, I was responding to your claim that it can’t be plagiarism because you can’t copyright a fact. What you can and can’t copyright has absolutely fuck-all to do with plagiarism, because plagiarism and copyright infringement are not the same thing. If you steal ideas or information without properly crediting sources, it’s plagiarism! And no, the example you use of the sun doesn’t prove your point (or any point really). Using information that is considered “common knowledge” is not plagiarism. However, if I were an authority on ferrets and I wrote, “On the third day of our expedition, we witnessed the black-footed ferret hunting shortly after dawn. It’s commonly understood that they only hunt at night, but my studies have demonstrated that they aren’t entirely nocturnal” and you published “Black footed ferrets have been known to hunt during the day” without acknowledging where it came from, it would be plagiarism. Yep, paraphrasing _information_ without crediting the source is still plagiarism! (Note: I made all of that up. I have no idea about the hunting habits of black-footed ferrets). I provided a pretty good definition of plagiarism, which you didn’t acknowledge or argue against. Would you like other definitions of plagiarism? [Modern Language Association’s Definition](http://writing.umn.edu/tww/plagiarism/definitions.htm#mla) > [@](#): > > (Gibaldi, Joseph, and Walter S. Achtert. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 3rd ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1988. 21-25.)The MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as **the use of another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without giving proper credit to the source.** The word comes from the Latin word plagiarius (“kidnapper”), and Alexander Lindey defines it as “the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own” (Plagiarism and Originality [New York: Harper, 1952] 2). “In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else.” This can include paraphrasing, copying someone else’s writing word for word, \*\*or using ideas that aren’t your own without proper citation. \*\* Plagiarism is often unintentional, and bad research habits can form early in elementary school. Unfortunately, these bad habits can continue throughout high school and college and may result in severe consequences, from failure in a course to expulsion. To avoid these consequences, always cite your sources if you are unsure if you are plagiarizing (Gibaldi 21-25). Back to my original point…even the examples that don’t look like word-for-word copying are still useful in _establishing a pattern_ of plagiarism because she is still taking ideas, information, and descriptions that do not belong to her. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/91 "2008-01-25T01:19:57Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] And you can’t plagiarize a fact, either. If the Kiawa or whomever made ladles out of cherrywood, you can’t claim copyright or any kind of ownership of that information, any more than you can claim ownership of the fact that sun is a atomic fireball floating in space. Go ahead and try, I dare ya! [/QUOTE] It’s not that she’s plagiarizing facts. If you have Ki **o** wa in your novel and you want to use the fact that they used cherrywood ladles, then you say something like “Chief Running Stereotype picked up the cherrywood ladle and began to serve the stew.” You don’t take a passage directly from John T. Scholar’s paper, change “rather” to “but”, and then insert it into your book. That’s what Edwards did several times. On another note, if I ever teach a composition class again, I’m definitely getting one of Edwards’ books and using that as an example of “This is how I know you didn’t cite your sources.” Such clunky transitions. My brain, it hurts from them. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/92 "2008-01-25T02:28:06Z")
**Evil Captor** , why do you keep harping on whether not someone’s been done any harm by this? Ethics isn’t always about someone being harmed appreciably; in this case it’s about honesty. If a college student was brought up on charges of plagiarism and his defense was that it didn’t hurt anybody, he’d be laughed out of the hearing. In works of both fiction and nonfiction, you’re expected to cite your sources and paraphrase, not play Swap the Preposition. Usually the person who does the plagiarizing is the one that is hurt most by it when discovered, since s/he is the one whose integrity, both professional and personal, is damaged. So if you really must have an answer to who has been hurt by this, it’s Cassie Edwards. Though there are all those other authors whose work has been used without their permission and without attribution. Hmm, I wonder if they feel a little touchy about all this. I don’t know why you’re continuing to defend her actions, since it’s blindingly obvious to anyone who can read that she has plagiarized multiple times in her work. You can cherry pick the lesser offenses all you like, but that doesn’t weaken any of the times where she’s taken entire sentences, plopped a couple synonyms in them, and set them as dialogue, or taken distinctive descriptive phrases and used them as her own. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/93 "2008-01-25T02:45:39Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] Well, actually, it might well be. Most starting out romance writers sell their books for very little – I have heard as little as $100, though $500 is more common for a total unknown. [/QUOTE] That’s curious. I say that because a buddy of mine has just recently gained a contract with the extra-torrid imprint under Harlequin for… rather a lot more than a $500 advance. She’s a first time writer, too. It may be that some of the more, ah, specialized publishers have lower advances. What I know about romance novels couldn’t fill a Dixie cup. I do know from plagarism, though, and while this seems to be a bit fuzzier in fiction, generally I find that historical novels have a list of Suggested Reading or Acknowledgements or even a formal bibliography noting their sources for their factual info. Some don’t, of course, but there’s a difference between ‘The merchants stopped at Campeche, a city on the southern tip of Mexico’ and the direct ferret quotes. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/94 "2008-01-25T04:27:49Z")
The big publishers–Harlequin, Kensington, Signet etc–do offer substantially larger advances than $100 or $500. Ellora’s Cave, an epublisher, offers about $1000 for novel length works. Those are standard contracts for authors, regardless of how well-known they are. Most e-publishers don’t offer advances at all, however, though a good seller will easily make $1000 or more. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/95 "2008-01-25T06:01:20Z")
**pepperlandgirl** , have you ever started an “Ask the Romance Novelist” thread? You have written one, haven’t you? Or am I confusing you with someone else? Romance novelists of the Dope, I’d like to see one . . . ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610/96 "2008-01-25T06:18:06Z")
I have written a few, but I’ve never really thought starting a “Ask The…” thread. Especially since there are members of the Dope who are far more experienced/successful as authors than I am (though not necessarily romance, I’m not sure…) and probably know more about the biz than I do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plagiarism-rocks-romance-world-again/434610.md?page=4)