Christiane Serruya, a USA Today bestselling self-published author of contemporary romances, plagiarized massive chunks of other writers’ books, specifically Courtney Milan and Tessa Dare.
The plagiarism isn’t in question. It’s blatant. Text in Green is copied word for word.
Caught red-handed, Christiane came up with a dog ate my homework excuse.
She hired some guy on Fiverr. Apparently, there are people on Fiverr who will write your book for you for $150.
If she is lying, she’s a plagiarist. If she isn’t lying, it’s worse. It’s worse because she paid someone to write a book for her and didn’t even bother reading it.
All writers steal, some consciously, some not. But this isn’t a phrase or a plot twist or even the name of a lycanthrope virus. These are pages and pages and pages of actual text lifted from other authors.
To add insult to injury,
This thread by Diana Peterfreund sums up a lot of my feelings. I’m posting it here in its entirety, but you can also click on the twit below to read it.
Either you are an author or you’re not. If you are a writer, your primary focus should be on writing the best book you can. That’s it. If you are gluing chunks of other books together to make money as fast as you can, you are churning out crap. You’re not a writer, you’re a thief and other people have every right to call you out on your crap. It doesn’t matter if you are self-published or professionally published.
Christiane is not an author. She is a fraud.
Courtney Milan is a lawyer, however. I look forward to seeing how this will turn out.
What I find stunning is the complete lack scruples. No shame, no embarrassment. They’re stealing other people’s ideas and work and they don’t even feel guilty. Wow.
I wish I could find this stunning. But I’m old enough and observant enough to be well aware that a portion of humanity (fortunately not the largest portion) does this kind of thing routinely. Think about it, the reason YOU don’t do this is BECAUSE you feel the way you do. These people don’t feel this way at all. You are right, they feel no shame, etc. If there is any concern at all, it is the narcissistic worry that they might get caught. However, it seems to me that people like this are also lacking the ability to foresee the consequences of their actions, and generally believe they won’t get caught, even when the likelihood of exposure is obvious to everyone else.
I’m just very grateful that not everyone around us in this world would do this type of thing, and I’m very grateful for the many, many actual authors whose work I enjoy every single day.
This is insane! I have been reading up on this plagiarist and her defense was obviously written by a ghost writer on fiverr.
Sounds like this Serruya twit is going to find out how swift karma can be, when you screw around with a lawyer . I hope she gets raked over the coals, and finds out just how useless her idiotic excuse will be as a defense before a judge.
I must be dense. I thought the only people who employed ghost writers were non-writers. You know, actors, politicians, etc. WTH??!!
Right there with you.
I mean, what’s the point of calling yourself an author if you’re not the actual person who creates the prose?
That act, in and of itself, seems like the behaviour of a fraudster to me. It’s a false representation in order to sell your product. Similar in a way to Belle Gibson and James Frey. Milli Vanilli even. All claimed fictitious personas in order to sell their product. All (IMHO) are fraudsters.
This. Why would you even? I don’t understand the motivation.
+1
If she isn’t the author, why is she claiming to be “the author”?
Crazy!
Apparently, she is a non-writer. She was only in this for the money and paid these ghost writers peanuts in order to make money off her name. Additionally, she must have either started believing her own press or that she would never get caught, because she submitted one if her “works” for a RITA award. Now she has taken all of her social media sites down.
Her defense is bizarre. I can’t stand that this is in the realm of normal for self publishing. No shame or scruples. May karma kick her ass.
It’s unfortunate that in this day and age there isn’t a text compare tool that can be used to compare a new book to already published texts. Should be a criteria for getting published and being entered for contests. If we have AI that can pick our face from a crowd from the distance of a satellite SOMEONE should be able to develop this.
I’m always saddened to here of things like this.
But there is! Universities use tools such as Turnitin to check plagiariam. Why is this not a thing in publishing?
This. If students have to live in fear of accidental plagiarism, even against yourself, surely this should be a standard elsewhere
Agree! I am in a doctorate program right now, and it is a HUGE thing that the university watches for. Cannot imagine that Amazon can’t do something similar.
Agreed. All of my university papers towards the end came back 10-20% duplicate because we’d among a class of 200 students some of us were bound to use similar quotes and references. But it was easy to see if anything else was plagiarized.
Haha. I’m in a MPH program, we also use Turnitin!
When I was in Uni they told us over and over not to plagiarize. It’s sad to see so many people online (article writers) plagiarize. Although I feel even worse when I realize those that are not plagiarizing and still cant write for crap… get paid. (Technical articles on say military stuff. ) Mostly because I know I can do better.
Incredible! Thanks so much for sharing. So surprised these are common practices.
???
I’d so be suing. I’d sue so hard no one would ever think about doing it again. Partner with all the victimized authors/publishers for a joint strategy.
Even if the comment about a ghost writer is true, the “author” published it under their name, and they’re culpable in regards to the quality. Other organizations when they publish the work of others check for plagiarism. Pulling excerpts and running them past Google is easily done even if you dont have more robust means and plagiarism checking services.
?♀️
Courtney Milan is a lawyer and was a law professor who taught intellectual property and one of the over 20 authors that were plagiarized from was Nora Roberts. Google what she is planning.
I remember back in the 90s when a fan Fic writer found out her story having only the character names and sex changed was in a short story compilation, The plaigaizer claimed it could not be called plaigairism because the story was not copywrited and the original characters were owned by the TV show. What a mess. I wonder how that turned out, I left the fandom and hid for awhile to avoid the bruhaha. Highlander was always having some thing stolen by some one
Thank you for reporting the person perpetrating this theft.
It happens because people turn away from such obvious thievery.
The Law needs time to pursue this matter and that can be years.
Sue, the original writer is entitled to be paid for their work that was plagiarised. Then paid for their loss of income caused by someone buying the plagiarised work instead.
The thief needs to pay damages for not exercising due diligence. and on & on, BUT …
what I want most of all is a three to five sentence update once a week until this matter is resolved putting the NAME of the THIEF out here where readers can REMEMBER the name . . . cause people who do this . . . they’ll just make a fake name up
BUT, to get paid the name will have to connect back to her legal identity . She wanted her name known (if it is actually her’s)this is what it will be known for.
Cause, not to be a bummer, But I don’t remember HER name just the name of those she stole from . . .once a week:
” blankity blank is claiming it’s not her fault, she stole someone else’s work, got paid for it and gave a portion of those earnings to indy GW who actually stole what she put her name to.” . . . once a week
My husband was a community college professor teaching English until 2 years ago. He was finding it harder and harder to hold students accountable for plagiarism. They had learned that if they threw a big enough fit the administration would step in and ensure that the student didn’t face any real consequences. I understand that the high schools are worse in many cases, with parents defending their kids. It starts with what we expect from our high school and college students and the messages that we send them.
The high school my kid goes to is super strict about plagiarism. Everything is checked by both students and teachers.
My husband was a community college professor teaching English until 2 years ago. He was finding it harder and harder to hold students accountable for plagiarism. They had learned that if they threw a big enough fit the administration would step in and ensure that the student didn’t face any real consequences. I understand that the high schools are worse in many cases, with parents defending their kids. It starts with what we expect from our high school and college students and the messages that we send them.
I write fanfiction, and yes plagarism is rife there as well, but it only recieves bad reviews since we are ‘borrowing’ our characters and certain plot lines as well, but stealing whole bits of texts as your own is a bad thing. Just put a mustache on the Mona Lisa and call it art.
Wow. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but unfortunately not. As an academic, I am seeing more and more plagiarism. Pay-for-a-paper groups actually leaflet on campus.
My mother is an English teacher in the US and she complained for a long time that there is a book written by a black author which is plagiarized from a few other books and was being pushed by a lot of people in scholastic circles even though it was of a reading level for younger students (it was taught in high school and was middle school reading level).
For something more recent, look at the CBS vs Anas Abdin ongoing case. Abdin was making a computer game which got greenlit by Steam in 2014 and ST:D looks like it stole a lot of stuff from it.
Aaah, the gaming developer community.
Where it isn’t stealing or plagiarism, it’s … ‘inspiration’.
I think you are looking at it backwards. The game dev is suing CBS for a TV show which ripped a lot of stuff from the game he was working on. Not the other way around.
Just the fact that you said “Black Author” disgusts me more than anything else. It shows racism. If you weren’t racist, you would have said, “my mother always complained about a book that was plagiarized and everyone plagiarizes it” but no…. You intentionally mentioned “Black” so don’t even try to tell me that I am “reaching” by saying that. Race has absolutely nothing to do with criminal behavior. There have been so many scientific studies done on this issue that have all proven that race is NOT a contributing factor to criminal behavior. The ALMOST EXACT SAME PERCENTAGES of people in each race commit crimes. Don’t throw conviction statistics my way either because those have already been proven as misleading due to law enforcement bias.
I am Caucasian by the way so don’t try to play that “you are looking for offense because of your race” card. This comment and the one before it I made are in response to Eric’s comment.
The five authors which include those you mentioned plus, Christi Caldwell need to seek a legal recourse. Serruya profited from their work, word for word. This isn’t the first case of plagiarism, and with people wanting to make a quick buck it won’t be the last.
It seems like Fiver is where the scum of the book world hang out. As reviews are sold their too.
My mouth is hanging open…
Interesting article about plagiarism at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, at https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2015/10/plagiarism-the-pattern-and-the-response/. They, you may recall, are the ones who discovered the jaw-dropping plagiarism by Cassie Edwards about a decade ago; it was discovered about a decade ago but had been going on for a long, long time.
Just a FYI for the Authorlords with the new website changes : something hinky is going on with the blog comments. When I look at the title listing it say 112 comments. Click on the comments, you go to the latest comments (like normal) so after then click on older comments, the # of comments change to 12 and I only see the 1st 12 comments. lol I know it’s weird ’cause my previous comment, which showed up yesterday, got ate by some computer monster. 😛
I don’t think the count on the blog home page updates as dynamically as it did in the old format. I saw the same 12 comments number, but today it’s showing 115, so it might just update daily. I’m assuming all the posts are showing. I’m seeing two pages worth anyway.
It looks to be fixed.
Last night there was something hinky going on with replies on mobile. Top level comments were showing, but I was only seeing replies on my desktop. (I noticed because there was a comment thread I wanted to check on last night, and I could only find the top comment.)
The gal of this lady is incredible. It’s an insult to the profession, and to the people who treat writing as an art, constructing beautiful, lyrical stories for others to enjoy. Regardless of whether she’s blaming someone on Fiverr, her morals are already suspect just on that premise alone.
I just bought two books by indie authors who posted here as members of the BDH, so one good thing has come out of all this! I do not subscribe to KU, because when I take a chance on a book, I want to give my money to the author. As someone else said, if I don’t like, I don’t buy another one.
Well, the USAT best seller is about to have nearly every dime made off of those books taken from her and given to those two authors. If it would have just been ideas, no, but actual words means she is guilty. The words are published by her. She is at fault. Doesn’t matter if she hired a ghost writer.
In universities all student’s work have to be submitted via special software that picks up any text that is too similar to works submitted in the past. Why doesn’t Amazon deploy something similar? ???
I do not believe that the high level book plot (original story) can be plagiarised: history repeat itself, humans are faced with similar life conditions, and there is no story that have not been told before.
But the way that story is told, the way writer develops characters, gives colour and taste to a description of a mandane event, the way writers soul is converted into words and layed out on book pages: that is sacred.
I am sorry this keeps happening too easy. I wonder if Amazon could be sued or at least put on Notice that they are fostering criminal activity. I spend a lot of money on books in both paper and ebooks. I would like to think I am buying the authors work.
The thing about ebooks is that I can buy and start reading right now, that is tempting. Maybe I will reconsider ebooks and stick to paper except for my trusted authors
Very appropriately, just tonight I was catching up on an old episode of ‘Murder, she wrote’ where a failing author fed Jessica a sleeping potion and went downstairs in the night, pinched Jessica’s latest manuscript and took it out to photocopy it ready to use it as her own work.
In this blog we have reality copying old TV shows!
Hell, this is isn’t just fraud. It’s lazy, sloppy, triflin’ fraud. Not that sophisticated money laundering schemes are any better, but sheesh. this is low, bottom of the barrel stuff.
+1!!
On the plus side, I just discovered Courtney Milan. Gonna give her a try as I’ve abused my Tessa Dare books to no end…
Good plan. Excellent writer.
I’m a few chapters into Proof by Seduction and I’m hooked!
+1
wiki says courtney milan taught contracts and intellectual property. I can’t wait to see the slaughter
Unfortunately digital media is such a loosely controlled realm that shyster con artists have more leeway and latitude than in most other forums. Legality is far behind with creating recognizable boundaries, true guidelines for behaviors and actions and the appropriate measures and enforceable penalties. Information property, proprietary intelligence, digital infringement, blah blah blah.
It saddens me how Amazon and others feed the frenzy of technology-boosted retail, all for the sake of having the largest footprint. Yes, I’m a dinosaur when it it comes to printed publication and real book sellers from the brick-and-mortar era. Morals and values were part of the package along with pride in quality work. I’ve moaned in the past on here about the saturation of garbage content in Amazon especially with KU. You’re so inundated with the fake fiction it is disheartening to an avid reader to discover and enjoy really good works and true authors.
My sister is a college professor of creative writing and she has become so disenchanted and disgusted with the plagiarist environment that has evolved into the everyday mindset of most everyone. I hope there is big enough legal repercussions and punitive consequences for this Serruya person. Unfortunately she’s just one nano byte in the swirling milieu of ever growing shady shyster connivers out there. Sue the pants and any future pants off her! Restitution should be part of it. And include Amazon due yo their benign neglect and lack in how they manage and sell digital property.
Apologize about the soapbox but this really burns me up. Especially since I love the written word so much. Have always bemoaned my lack of talent in that area (really wish I had any creative genes) and to see these fakers just so blatantly out there pisses me off!!!
I’m probably a bad person for saying that what offends my sensibilities the most isn’t the scam itself – it’s the sheer incompetence of these idiots.
Oh c’mon now, obviously #copypaste_serruya can’t be held legally accountable since she (can’t actually WRITE &) paid for a ghostwriter on Fiverr who has now conveniently closed up shop! Hmmm could this be a thinly disguised LIE? ….much like her books, apparently?
Ah well, never heard of her, but still hope she gets the pants sued off her lazy a$$
https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-cristiane-serruya-courtney-milan-plagiarism-20190219-story.html
made major news outlets
I sew. I also crochet. Several years ago, an casual friend mentioned she was going to be going to a craft fair and offered to take a couple of lace pieces and sell them in her booth. Long story short. I have no idea what happened to them, and she left that office soon after. Plagiarism is theft, free sites that steal an author’s work is theft. Although now I have 2 new authors to try.
This really pisses me off, writer work so hard to put out a book and other people just stealing it and no one is sanctioning them
Take that, plagiarist. I bought some of the originals. Courtney Milan’s stories have a lot of humor.
Wow… It’s since exploded to many other authors…many whom I think we BDH have mentioned and recommended to each other… Looks like the offender has taken down her own Twitter and website… http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2019/02/19/what-to-do-about-copypastecris/
This is just crazy. I can’t even. So many things wrong with this. Who uses a ghostwriter? I thought it was just celebrities who wanted to write about themselves. If you’re an author, why would you need a ghostwriter? Ok so she has a ghostwriter…she’s still responsible for the story, it’s her name on the book. I’m sorry but this author seems to be all about the bottom line regardless of consequences.
I don’t think she’s anything but a fraud trying to cash in. Not an author, a fake and obviously a thief… and she almost got away with it…. if it weren’t for us “damn” readers!!!
This makes me so sad and a good bit of mad. I grew up reading classics and loved reading to my own daughters then latter my grandchildren. I love writing and so do my daughters. I never have liked KU on principle. I want to pay writers for their work. If I can’t afford it, I have a wish list. After finding out all the scams some involved with KU it’s even less desirable. I recently purchased a book that completely plagarises a popular TV show. I deleted it and will not purchase the authors work. There are so many wonderful authors inde and otherwise that are trying to make a go of it. Stuff like this makes it harder for them. I wish there was more that can be done before the fact.
Just found this (longish) entry from Nora Roberts’ Fall Into the Story blog. She details her experience with Dailey and #copypastechris. What I like is she calls Chris “creature” and promises to help any plagiarized author who can’t afford to sue. Have to wonder how that’s going to work between the US and Brazil. Here’s the link:
http://fallintothestory.com/plagiarism-then-and-now/