Sometimes plagiarism doesn't pay

[julesjones]

You might remember that back in January there was uproar in the romance blogosphere when major author Cassie Edwards was shown to have engaged in extensive plagiarism of other people's work, both non-fiction and fiction. The initial reaction of her publishers was to ignore this, but now one publisher has announced that they will no longer be publishing her books. Full details in the AP report, but the meat is this:

"Signet has conducted an extensive review of all its Cassie Edwards novels and due to irreconcilable editorial differences, Ms. Edwards and Signet have mutually agreed to part ways," the publisher said in a statement Friday.

"Cassie Edwards novels will no longer be published with Signet Books. All rights to Ms. Edwards' previously published Signet books have reverted to the author."

Jane of the blog Dear Author has written a letter to Signet thanking them for taking this situation seriously. It's worth taking a moment to tell Signet that their action has been appreciated.

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

but said she didn't know she was supposed to credit her sources

Either extremely ignorant or extremely mendacious. Not sure which is worse...

[julesjones]

There are several English lit academics who comment and/or post on the Dear Author and Smart Bitches blogs. You can imagine what their response to that was back in January...

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I have never quite understood what is so difficult about "don't steal" myself :( but it does seem to confuse people (I work at a Uni and the problems with plagiarism from the Web... oh my god)

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

Because plagiarism is not the same as stealing. Following your logic, some people think its okay to take something off the web if its clearly marked as being in the public domain (as is, for example, the case with the Wikipedia, or any US government document), because you cannot steal something that no one owns. Or self-plagiarism, to which some academics are particularly prone. (You already own it, so how can that be stealing?)

Military historians cite our sources for the specific purpose of permitting the text to be scrutinised by other historians.

[ckd]

All rights to Ms. Edwards' previously published Signet books have reverted to the author.

<snark>Shouldn't that be "authors"?</snark>