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.
My goodness… that whole saga seems like a plot to a book itself. I look forward to seeing how this turns out as well. *grabs popcorn*
+1!
+1
+1
+1
I’m too lazy to look it up but I’m wondering how long it took for her to be called out since she released the book. I guess that’s a positive about the internet is that regular readers or other authors can get the word out quick on twitter when they find shenanigans like this. Curious to see how this plays out.
Goodreads says Jan 10, 2018, so about a year, which is really long in terms of internet time…
Yes, but by the time they are done suing her she will probably lose all the money she made and more. I think this may deter more people from trying this scam in the future.
Hopefully. 🙂
Sounds good to me. Maybe she should find another line of work while she’s at it.
It breaks my heart to see authors who put heart and soul into a story just for someone to come along and steal it from them, and then for those thrives to deny it!!! I honestly don’t know how some people in the world live with themselves! I hope Courtney Milan wipes the floor with the liar!
That was my thought, too. How does anyone think they can get away with plagiarism in this day and age? Fans of the victims can post on Twitter, Instagram, etc., and you’re exposed.
I also think authors should have to disclose if all or parts of a book were written by someone else. How does that not violate the basic principle of truth in advertising? If I pay to read a book by Author A and it was written by Ghostwriter B, then how is that not fraud? I don’t care if some of the biggest authors do it — you should have to disclose if someone else contributed to the book.
+1
I feel the same way about re-releasing older books, I think they should have to give the original publishing date, not the current one.
I agree. I take a look at a re-release thinking it’s something I haven’t read before (due to cover changes or whatever), and then I see the original published date. I’ll roll my eyes and think “I’ve read this before”. Grrr……
+10000000000
+100000000000!!!!!!!!!!! Have repurchased so many books that way! Ugh! And I’m a hoarder so it makes me even madder to spend time and energy finding them another home. Grrr! Ah, if only I had The Beast’s library….with a great VR archival system that I could access mentally any time. *sigh*
+1 sad heart, knowing that less talented don the “coat” of those with creativity.
+1
Wow, speechless!
But it is this type of thing that is driving some of the concerning trends in the industry and the reason why the Authorlords are so highly regarded. I am much more cautious about purchasing a “book” by a new author than I used to be. I am tired of being disappointed. I find that re-reading old faithful reliable authors is much more satisfying.
I am on my umpteenth re-read of Kate and am still finding interesting themes and subtleties that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s fascinating reading Magic Rises knowing what happens later, and wondering what the Authorlords had originally intended with Hugh and Roland.
+1! Oldies as goodies. That’s why I don’t mind waiting for sequels. It’s work.
+1
Same here MichelleD.
I generally go through a book twice in a row because the first time through, I’m usually going HUH? on something that relates to an earlier portion. On the second pass, I go, Ahh, I get it.
And as far as getting the themes and subtleties, either I’m catching stuff I didn’t before, or I am just that forgetful. Either way, I’m always learning new stuff.
And yeah, the Authorlords books (doesn’t matter which) are my go to for reading/listening when I need a serious pickmeup. Renee Raudman is also great for the pickmeup.
Yyyeeeesss!! I agree!
Agreed. I’ve picked up one too many book that just didn’t cut it. Looking for new material to sink my teeth into is like looking for a unicorn; practically extinct but very rewarding when you do find it. Re-reading my favroutes are like coming home from a bad day at work and getting a hug from my 2y/o with a ‘luv you mommy’.
Priceless.
I look for samples/excerpts of books before buying, generally, I believe in try before buy…. in bookstores my old way of doing things was to open a book to a random page and read or try to read it, often resulting in an immediate decision to put the book back on the shelf and not buy it. In the case of the ALs, however, the decision was “buy!”
Most of the books sold by Amazon have samples of the content avaialable…
Also, I do not have the same criteria-or rather, less picky criteria–for a $0.99 book versus one that’s $12.99 or $8.99 or $7.99 or $4.99 or $2.99 or even $1.99–for $0.99 I’m willing to accede to issues I consider totally unacceptable in higher priced books, just as I accept that Dollar Tree reading glasses at $1.00 are very much not as sturdy, well-made, durable, etc. than were I to get reading glasses or optometrist glasses… but for $1.00 I can lose/destroy/break/scratch/etc. a LOT of reading glasses before approaching the cost of optometrist glasses, and very much less regret the loss of multiple pairs of chish reading glasses, versus losing/breaking/etc. much more costly glasses–particularly since reading small print without glasses, is difficult/causes eyestrain/rapidly becomes infeasible!
Plagiarists though an are entirely different consideration. Lack of competent editing/copyediting, happens even from the biggest NYC publishers–take a look at the first printing of Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison and shudder, there are inappropriate homonyms, sentences that seem to be missing lines, and “supersede” consistently misspelled “supercede.”…. Grammatical issues etc. are annoying, but I get less irritated with “this needed editing/better editing/COPYEDITING that is more competent!” from a 99 cent book, than one that costs multiple times that. But “I’ve read this before and not from this author…” is, again, a different issue/fraud. It’s annoying enough when I see the same phrases reused by an author who had them in one or more earlier books, and it’s not the words of a character who repeats the same lines. When it’s plagiarism from someone -else-, it copyright violation/plagiarism.
But bad writing… there are bestsellers which have deficiences in any or all of plotting, logic, characterization, editing, copyediting…. so I want samples, which are representative–though that does not help, for books which fall apart somewhere beyond the point the sample ends. …
Well, that explains a lot. I’m interested to see how the fallout goes. I know Courtney Milan is a lawyer, so she will be pursuing this, as she should. But she’s also an excellent writer who could be writing rather than taking cheats to task. Bummer.
This is absolutely horrible. It breaks my heart that people would plagiarize. Honestly my fear that I don’t have an original thought in my head and would end up just plagiarizing is why I don’t write anything. Reviewing is my outlet. I’ve heard of authors having burnout and hiring ghost writers but it should still be proofread. This should have never happened.
Yes. This situation in a mess. I know someone who worked with Cristiane in author services, and she went back and looked at material Cristiane had sent to her, scenes that she had admitted to being ghostwritten, but that she the author had “heavily rewritten”. Some of these scenes have been revealed to have been plagiarized. The person I know had reached out to Courtney with this info.
So, even if she hired a ghostwriter on Fiverr, she may have still been the one to actually commit the plagiarism.
And let’s be real. Amazon makes it all too easy for scammers to abuse the system. It is as or even more frustrating to legitimate indie authors as it is to trad pub authors. I, as an indie author, am removing all of my books from KU this year BECAUSE of scam issues, abuses to the system, and Amazon’s approach of banning accounts innocent of wrongdoing right alongside the scam artists.
The rise of self-publishing success opened the door for scam artists and book mill “authors”. It is an absolutely unfortunate situation that causes real, hard working authors of all stripes no end of stress and frustration. It’s infuriating and horrible to me that ALL indie authors are being painted with the same brush as this situation unfolds. I’ve seen tweets from readers swearing not to buy any indie books “until the community gets its house in order”. I have news: if legit indie authors could fix or control the situation with scammers, it would have been done YEARS ago. We hate it. We hate it so much it’s driven good writers to give up completely.
I write my own books. I have NEVER understood the draw of using a ghostwriter. For me, the joy is in crafting stories and words. My OWN stories and words. I wish things were different. I wish Amazon would get RID of KU, which would solve about 80% of the scammer problems out there. I’m so sorry this has happened, and yes, I have crossed paths with Cristiane before. In passing, not to know her. I had never read any of her books, and I unfollowed/blocked/unfriended her everywhere as soon as this broke. It’s absolutely heartbreaking and disgusting that this happened.
I joined KU – but I am still ambivalent about it. It seems very much in the vein of old school Harlequin Romances with far less control. A lot of standard structure and not always a lot of good character development but more character facades making their way through a series of books.
A lot of KU success is built on the “publish quick, hit tropes, make money” pattern. A vast majority of KU readers, in my experience, are less concerned with the quality of the books and more with whether those books hit the tropes they’re looking for. I’m in reader groups where literally ten times a day, someone (a KU reader who reads hundreds of books per year) will post “Hey, I read this book and I can’t remember what it was called or who wrote it. The main character was escaping her abusive past and the hero was a hitman. There was a scene with a parrot, I think.” They read so much, so fast, they can’t remember authors or books. That doesn’t build an effective audience for an author, and creates the reality where if an author isn’t pushing out a book a month, no one is reading them. I tried being in KU as an author, and it didn’t work well for me. I don’t write fast enough to be successful there, and my books aren’t the, as you say, Harlequin formulaic structure that hits whatever trope those readers are looking for over and over. Tropes aren’t a bad thing – every genre has them. But many KU books definitely follow the surface-fluff hit-the-market-tropes and not much else trend. I can’t write that way. Well, I could, but I don’t WANT to. And having seen the damage KU continues to do to indie publishing in general, I find I don’t want to support it, as an author or reader.
I am a KU reader, and a book buyer. I like KU because I read so fast, and I can binge-read an entire series. I have certain authors I like, and I do preorder books.
I have found some great authors that way- I’m in the middle of my third Honor Raconteur series right now, and I know I read at least two of her books on KU. There’s a lot of schlock out there, too, and I’m ok with that – I turn the stuff in that I don’t like.
So for me, I hope it doesn’t go away. I hope they can clean out the mess. I don’t actually understand the idea behind ghostwriting fiction.
Agreed. I’m also a KU reader. It allows me to check out new authors at will, binge read multiple genres. Readers aren’t the problem. Just because we can remember certain pieces of a book, but not the title doesn’t make readers unsophisticated. That’s rather insulting. As far as Indie authors, I’ve found several that I love and several that I don’t. I hope both indie authors and KU sticks around.
As far as plagiarism, yeah… that needs to go but I’m not sure how the industry could stop it, short of running all published works thru a program similar to those at a university.
This case looks glaringly blatant.
But then, I thought ghostwriters were just for biographies so what do I know? I hope the original authors receive any recompense due to them.
I am a KU reader. I also am a book buyer (If it’s good). In the 80’s and 90’s I was a used book buyer. During the lean times, I was a stand in the bookstore and read because I’m too broke to buy. When I have a good job I buy.
Sorry if you don’t approve but KU readers are a lot more complicated than you suggest. I love books, whatever way I can get my hot little hands on them. I prefer well written books, but sometimes they aren’t available.
The crap that is going on (scams and plagiarism) is horrible and unacceptable, but KU may make books available to people who would not otherwise have access. While I support any author’s right to not put their books on KU being judgmental about KU readers isn’t right.
I’m sorry if my words came across as judging all KU readers. I don’t think all KU readers are the same. I love the readers who have found me through KU, who were very gracious when I told them my reasons for leaving the program and taking my books wide. They are amazing, wonderful readers with big hearts, and I am fortunate to have them.
What I am saying is this: there is a consistent pattern of reading behavior among a large percentage of KU readers that differs significantly from readers who exclusively buy books. Yes, some KU readers absolutely use it to find authors they would otherwise not try. Some use it because they love reading, they read a lot, and they don’t have the budget to otherwise support their habit. But numbers don’t lie, and the simple math of publishing in KU and being successful supports the fact that a large number of KU readers read, move on, and forget if the author isn’t pumping out a book a month. In fact, authors who support their business this way say now that a book a month is no longer enough; that to keep those readers and thus the income they bring, they have to come out with a book every 2-3 weeks. I’ve seen that number stated over and over by multiple authors making a lot of money in KU. It’s a very different business model from sales, which can support an author with much less frequent releases, because the reader base tends to remember and stay with them even if it’s four or six months between releases. It’s a different audience with different reading patterns. One is, IMO, much more difficult for an author to sustain.
I will close by saying that Amazon’s treatment of authors in KU is the larger part of any problem. In 2018, they stripped pages read from dozens of authors I personally know, costing them hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars. They cited “fraudulent borrow activity” and when asked to give more specific explanations, Amazon literally replied that they would “not be providing further information”. But “another violation could result in termination of the author’s account”. These authors, baffled and with no clear idea of what could possibly have constituted as fraudulent borrows and page reads, had no recourse to try and change whatever was wrong, because Amazon refused to identify it. The next month, Amazon flagged multiple accounts again, stripping pages read away again, resulting in lost income. Accounts that were flagged for a second time were closed with no recourse. This is author’s livelihoods.
My reasons for leaving KU are multi-faceted. I refuse to support a system that punishes authors with no transparency. I also find that KU isn’t the most efficient way to build an audience of readers, for me personally, based on my previous statements about reading patterns of many (but not all) KU readers.
I’m not judging people who use KU. I still have readers who use it, and I completely understand why they do. It’s a double edged sword. I’ll be very sad for them if and when KU goes away in the future, but I’ll be happy for authors. I think KU is very bad for authors. The good news is, it’s much easier now for indie authors to get their books digitally into libraries, and it’s easier than ever for people with kindle readers to borrow from libraries. I think this is a great alternative to KU that is only going to get more accessible and easier to use in the coming years.
Carysa,
May I quote part of your post here on my FB page?
Thank you – Grace Draven
Absolutely, Grace.
It’s terrible when the bad apples in the bunch absolutely ruin the whole bundle for everyone. Thanks for the comment, it gives us an idea of what the good apples have to go through in this situation.
You’re welcome. And yes, please understand that I am not saying all KU readers are the same.
Wow. Just… wow. The “ whoops, my ghostwriter did this” – what the hell? Did you read your own book, lady? Excuse me – “own” book. Because you can’t actually call yourself a writer or an author, can you?
Lolz, sounded like a cop-out to me too
Sigh. I wrote up a long comment. I didn’t post. Probably caught in the spam filter again. That seems to happen to me a lot for some reason. 🙁
It posted. 🙂
Yay, thank you Ilona/Gordon/Britney for fixing it and letting my comments get through! <3 🙂
Check your post above. Grace draven wants permission to repost some of it. Not sure if you’ve seen her request on your post…
It’s one thing to take inspiration from other authors it’s another thing to blatantly steal other authors work. The way a person sets out to become an author gos along the line of this. 1) never written a story before so I take stuff from others and credit them. 2) I start exploring how I write while still borrowing stuff from other writers while still crediting them. 3) I’ve got the base of what my writing style is and start writing more in my style and less in others while still crediting them. 4) I’m comfortable in my own style and start writing my own stories trying to get them published and stop borrowing stuff from others.
Bella Andre chimed in and found parts of her book plagiarized by Cris as well.
I always figured there was a big problem out there that wasn’t being addressed. If that’s even possible in indie publishing. The only thing one can do is take the scofflaws to court and hope that will help in the long run. And of course rake them over the coals in public forums. The world is full of liars and cheaters, so it really is buyer beware in every field.
Wow seems like a gross understatement. I’ve just finished my first revision of my NaNoWriMo story from last year, with the intention of getting published (fingers crossed). This is a huge accomplishment for me, taking all the funky thoughts rattling around my my peculiar little brain and committing them to proverbial paper where other people can actually see them. I written and rewritten (and will probably re-write more) chapters and scenes to make them better. Before I printed my story out for my friend to proof-read, I realized that I’d used an idea from another book and picked my way through 236 pages to make certain I’d changed it to something original.
I won’t lie, I am hoping beyond hope that one day the authors that I read obsessively (including you guys) will see my stories as something worth reading. I have taken a great deal of inspiration from my favorite books to make my idea something exciting. I can’t fathom disrespecting a fellow writer by blatantly copying their work. My story is almost like a kid to me, I want it to grow and get better.
I certainly hope this situation is resolved satisfactorily for the aggrieved author; I’m not really a fan of e-books, I prefer to have a nice book in hand while I sip my coffee and read a day away. I do occasionally buy e-books from authors I know, and I will certainly be cautious about buying from unknown entities on Amazon. As an avid reader and an aspiring writer, I appreciate that you bring these things to light.
Wow, how you have to be lazy to hire someone on Fiverr that he or she will “write ” a “book” for you. And you don’t know what is this book about. Some dummy wanted to be billionaire like J.K Rowling without hard work. Well, karma is a biatch….
I remember a case when a renowed sci/writer (ok, not asimov but more or less like you) had to stop the distribution of one of his books because an unknow writer found the way to trick the publising date of the entrys of one online blog.
The unknow doctored his blog with parts of the renowed book, and put a claim with… amazon or similar to stop the sales, while at the same time he made pass like a lawyer requesting a great amout of money from the real author.
Didn’t something similar happen to Grace Draven? Isn’s that why she stopped putting her serials (Wraith Kings) on her site?
Have you checked to see if she copied any from your books ?
I was thinking Courtney Milan is a lawyer… and a good one… Oops…
I just finished a series of books. I loved the story, the universe, the characters but the author needs one of my old professors (who made me rewrite something for 3 months until it was *right*) because the pacing was awful, the plot was good overall, but if the story were in the hands of a GOOD writer, it would have been SO MUCH BETTER. I’m seriously tempted to rewrite it and send it to the author saying “This is why you need a good editor.” But I don’t have time right now… (Hey, I once sent Tom Clancy a “fan” letter telling him he should go back to the editor he had at Navy Press, who made him tighten up the story until it was excellent instead of pretty good.)
I always looked for the condensed version of his books, so much easier to read and saved me hours of time and annoyance!
Yes I cannot tell you how often I am forced to skim read through major sections of a book because the author doesn’t know how to cut unnecessary junk out. I have read about the expectations of the Ilona Andrews editors but have come to believe editors like theirs are in the minority. And on KU, many writers must not have an editor at all – or have ever taken a writing class, for that matter.
Honey, too many of these writers not only don’t have an editor – they also lack a proof reader. Incomplete “erasures” and repeated words are a dead giveaway that no one has even looked at the page pre-publication. Please don’t let me start on autocorrect / spellcheck replacement words.
I know that time is money for a starving author, but you’re putting your name on this, folks! Have some pride in your work, would you?
Gawd – David Weber is a huge offender. I keep thinking that putting his books through the clothes washer would remove the extraneous dreck. Of course then hed have a novella instead of a doorstop of a book!
Wow. Throw the ghostwriter under the bus instead of accepting responsibility. I’d go after her with guns a’blazin. Kharma is watching.
As someone, whom in a former life taught elementary students the art of proper sourcing and quoting when writing, this disgusts me to no end. Also, using a ghost writer to publish a work of fiction…why??? It doesn’t make sense.
*le sigh* Where to begin. As a freelance artist I will honestly tell you that I research the heck out of every project I do. And many a design I can easily show you what work inspired my vision. It’s called stealing like an artist: nothing comes from nowhere, all art builds on what came before. (and yes, I did take that from the back of my copy of “Steal Like an Artist”). But that is using art to inspire….
Nothing frustrates me more when a client comes to me with a piece of art they downloaded from the internet and want me to use it in their campaign. I ALWAYS refuse because it’s theft, plain and simple. Using other people’s words is theft as well. I always want to support independent authors and artists but have found myself more and more jaded about how much work is truly inspired by another artist and how much was down right stolen.
Companies like Fiverr demean the work that artists of every stroke do because they take our talent and skills and diminish our ability to be adequately compensated. If you think you are getting custom artwork of any kind through any service that celebrates the lowest bidder, you are going to get what you paid for and often time that result has been stolen from another artist.
Any time I put my name on a piece of work, it is my work. Plain and simple. Christiane put her name on this work, it is her responsibility to own up and clean up her mess. As much as I hate to see something like this go to court, if this kind of theft is consistently swept under the carpet it makes it more difficult for the next person to fight it.
This makes me tired.
This makes me want to cry. The way the industry is set up, it’s lose-lose for talented people with a moral core and win-win for lazy people who corrupt themselves. It’s so hard to find good authors – who can trust the reviews? – that I find myself rereading books I know are worth my time. Let’s just say, my Ilona Andrews books are well worn.
I work as a freelance writer, and make crappy money while working hard. I am lucky if I make $10 a day.
I’ve been a ghostwriter a few times, and the ONE time that I was hired to write a short novella (about 20k words), I wrote it from the heart (I was given almost complete creative freedom).
I was so GLAD to get hired, even if the pay was oh-so-not-big, because I felt like I was doing myself a favor – and maybe I would finally get some real feedback from a stranger that’s paying me!
I never got any feedback. I had to “request payment” because a week after I sent them the work, they had not even messaged me about it. They paid, in the end, because the money was already in escrow, but I never got any feedback. I realized then that the people that hired me (registered as a company), didn’t really care about the book, they just wanted to publish something, anything. They don’t pay attention or take care to see if the writing has been copy-pasted, and real feedback is nothing but a dream. I don’t even know IF they published the story anywhere, I don’t even know what happened to it.
I feel so bad, even though I never plagiarized anyone. I hate that there are ghostwriters out there that give us a bad name. (Although, I’m finding it a little hard to believe Cristiane’s ghostwriter’s story, it just seems like an easy way out – hey, blame the ghostwriter.)
The thing is, we don’t really have much of a choice. We want to write for a living, but we also have to eat. Getting a regular job often means working yourself to the ground for minimal pay (at least, that’s how it is where I live), and that leaves no time for writing. It’s hard to write when your body really just wants to sleep after a 12+ hour shift. Knowing that you don’t even get paid for the extra hours only serves to increase your daily dose of depression.
So freelance writing and ghostwriting have been the only venues that allow me to write and make some money. It took me four years, and more, to get to a point where I can make ends meet just by freelance writing and ghostwriting.
I used to be proud of that, especially because it allowed me to write my own stuff too. I began to claw my way out of the pit of darkness, slowly, one step at a time.
Now I just feel dirty.
This is not news for me. I know that there are “freelance writers/ghostwriters” out there who copy other people’s work and call it a day. They do it cheap, too, and often, I would lose a job to someone who has claimed they can “do the job in one day/week/whatever.” It’s easy to blame the ghostwriter, but I know this happens.
I guess my point is, I hope this doesn’t tarnish all ghostwriters out there. Some of us do try our best and do not copy other authors. When we ghostwrite, we love the stories as if they were our own, even if we never get to publish them under our own names (and don’t even know if they see the light of day anyway).
I don’t think anyone if going to view ghost writers as the primarily guilty party here. 🙂 Do you have anything out under your own name?
OMG, thank you so much for your reply Ilona! It brightened my otherwise gloomy day.
And I hope that you’re right, that ghostwriters will not suffer from this.
As for me, another OMG, thank you for asking me about it!
But, I’m not ready to attempt to publish anything yet. I recently finished a first draft of my first novel, took a small break, and now I’m editing it. Extensively. I’m terrified that I’m just regurgitating every book I’ve ever loved (and yes, these include literally all of yours). My worst fear is unconscious plagiarism, so I analyze everything from characters to plot to descriptions and sentences, and try to discover where it came from, and how similar/different it is. I know that nothing is really new under the sun, and that it’s all about how the writer interprets ideas, but just because I know the theory, it doesn’t mean I would be good in practice. And since I began to focus more on writing for me (and not for others) just last summer, I decided not to rush with the (self)publishing thing, but to focus on just writing and getting better.
However, if you ever decide to have open submissions and give feedback to other aspiring writers again, I will definitely be among those who send you some of their work for feedback! I chickened out the last time.
Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart!
It was fun on Twitter last night when this broke. The “author” even plagiarized recipes and food descriptions from websites like theknot.com and germanfoods.org and there was a search for sources for the verbiage. She used word for word descriptions and recipes from several sources.
I feel bad from the plagiarized authors! And I cannot imagine “writing” a book by piecing together text from a half a dozen authors. One more question: I know that the book in question has been pulled from Amazon, but I looked at it several times last night and this morning. It had 260 reviews, almost all 4 and 5 star. The lowest were a couple of 3 star reviews. How is that possible?
She hired ghost-reviewers?
I don’t know. Maybe paid for reviews? They were not all the same. Now I wish I’d made screenshots.
Yes, there are paid reviewers
*****guffaws appreciatively******
VERY well stated, Ilona! Succinct, to the point, and it is black and white. You’re a writer or you’re not. As for “SD” in the comments… hugs!! YOU should not feel dirty!! YOU should try to publish under your name. Period. Don’t write for anyone else but YOU!
Kristin, thank you so much for your kind words and hugs! I have begun to do that, and maybe one day I will be ready to publish under my own name. Sending you multiple virtual hugs!! Thank you!!
So, let’s say you give me, your hunnybunny, ten bucks and say write something really action packed but also smexy as hell. If I then rip off Halfway to the Grave, are we cool? J. Frost won’t mind, I know her.
This made me chortle… and startle my husband. ❤❤❤
Dude. You should hold out for at least $150. Apparently that’s the going rate.
Ooof! It’s even worse when the stolen content is the one getting the recognition instead of the original. 🙁
The closest I’ve come to something like this is a few of years back I picked up a paranormal romance that was quoted as ‘fans of LKH will love (insert book title).” After buying the book and reading, oh, about 1/3 rd through I realized that while the author may have written the book (and not very well at that) the majority of the ideas and plot came from someone else. So, while some fans would love it others would be appalled at reading essentially a fan-fiction book. I ended up tossing the book across the room disgusted. In the end, that “author” didn’t get another penny out of me and it appears the last book published was in 2011.
Obviously, that’s not the same situation here, with the blatant copy/paste, but to me there seems to be a slippery slope of “inspired by” to copy and paste.
Readers will notice and in the long run it would be better to just write your own stories and gather a true following by your thoughts, in my opinion.
According to her bio, she’s a lawyer, too, which probably means she knows just how hard it is to prosecute someone for copyright violations and how much money it would cost to get anything like a fair settlement from the courts. And — bizarrely — one of her books is actually a final paper for a class on Professional Ethics, subtitled “a philosophical divagation about the evil banality of daily acts.” Probably not a coincidence?
As an indie author, though, I do have to say that I think there is still a sizable subsection of our “community” who are writing because we love it, and publishing because it’s fun to share our stories with other people who might be entertained. I’m writing because I love it (when I don’t hate it) and I love that self-publishing lets me easily share my stories with other people. I think maybe my part of the “community” is quieter — we’re not trying to tell other people how to get rich quick, so maybe we’re invisible 🙂 — but we are here. We do exist. And we don’t plagiarize, because seriously, where is the fun in that? The writing is the best part!
the fact that the plagiarism was so blatant is not that surprising, I have noticed a lowering of standards of books with a lot of “free” sites, offering, a yearly subscription, and advertising mainstream writers, but when you get in there, there “might” be one mainstream story (i.e. an old David Eddings) followed by masses of unedited (I REALLY hope it’s unedited, otherwise it’s scary at the lowering of editing standards, I am no great shakes at editing, but even I note the mistakes, and what I’m going to call plot plagiarism, i.e. there was one that was almost a condensed version of one of Ilona’s books, without any real “story” that I of course recognised, but it was scary bad.
I have begun to realise that the good authors will only produce one, maybe 2 books in a year, so if you look up an author, and they put 15 books out a year. well, that’s not hard to figure out. (Mind you Barbra Cartland once boasted it only took her 2 weeks to write a book… but…… since…. most….. of …… her ….. books… seemed to be gasped out very breathily… I recon half of the last books she wrote were half ….. (not knocking her books, when I was younger, I read them all… but the fact I could read one in a day….) the best authors are the ones who you need to “pause and digest” what is written, and then re-read. (although, if you could hear the arguments in my head, about some of your books… lol…)
anyway, I could rant on. whilst there is so much piracy and such going on, and people looking for “free” options, people will continue to churn out fodder. the discerning readers will learn, it’s better to pay for 2-3 books in a year, and seriously enjoy them, than download crap on a regular basis…
and why don’t you have spell check for us poor readers? lol
Barbara Cartland was also sued for plagiarism by Georgette Heyer I believe.
Huge choking laugh! May I describe the bouganvillia and the rest of the garden for 5 pages? Though I’m afraid I’m not in fact, too stupid to live, so I wouldn’t make it as one of Barbara Cartland’s heroines. In my misspent youth I read a lot of BC (our library didn’t have a great selection and finances were right) My mom and I would laugh until we cried. There were pages and multiple pages at a time that were literally identical in the various books. If it took her less than 2 weeks, I’m not at all surprised. Photocopies were her best friend!
My eyes popped out of my head like a character from a loony tunes cartoon reading this blog post. Holy Cow! I think I completely lost it when I saw that she hired someone from Fiverr to ghostwrite portions of her book. Fiverr….I can’t.
I was just on Serruya’s website a earlier ago because her books looked familiar. Went back to double check something and now her website is down.
I wonder how RWA and other professional groups will address ghost writers going forward.
I once bought a pretty good book in barns and noble, then a week later bought the same book. It had a different title, author, and publisher. But it was the same story. I never told anyone. I thought it had to have been a mistake? I no longer remember any details.
It might have been repackaged instead of stolen. Sometimes an author and publisher decide that the glossy bits (title, pen name, cover)aren’t up to snuff, so they change them. Let’s hope that’s what it was!
Big consumer of books here. Buy them use overdrive and Libby from library system and broke down and got KU. I search carefully and rarely find anything worthwhile there. But I actually did notice plagiarism. A lot. Big sections. I thought it was just me. Because this is so common and such creepy practice wish a site would arise so we could tag offenders. There is no part of quality life that isn’t hard cheese. Buck up and quit cheating or find easier work.
Also–maybe on same topic–noticed something I had never seen before. I am just a reader and KNOW NOTHING about the business so this is mostly my ignorance talking. We’ve had nonstop rain hail snow freezing temps and I got desperate to read something new. On KU found large series by “Michael Anderle” (??) “The Incredible Mr Brownstone” series. Caring paranormal bounty hunter–it was OK. But at the very back of the book he mentioned maybe over dozen books/collections that seemed to be written by committee (??) or groups under his direction–maybe??? I had never seen this before. I noticed as I read thru this series not only the writing MARKEDLY improved as the series continued but it truly seemed like another writers voice. I don’t mind and I guess people need to make a living but I sense this may be a part of the KU Indie author influence and hope someone is getting paid. I always remember the Western author Zane Grey who was asked why his super skilled cowboys etc always took four shots to do in the bad guys. ZG said bang! bang!bang!bang!–just made $1.
I’ve been following Michael Anderle.. author.. it’s a interesting progression. He started self-publishing the ‘Kurtherian Gambit” series. one book about every 30-60 days totaling 18 books in 3 years. He sold well enough to reach 10k per month in Amazon Royalties. So well that he started working/mentoring other indy authors and collaborated with them to write other stories in the Kurtherian universe. That progressed into his own publishing company which is what you’re seeing now. I bought and enjoyed the Kurtherian Gambit books and now “The Incredible Mr Brownstone” series .. The other author books I read on KU.
So, in my personal opinion (which is what the Comments is about, right?) none of the institutions, processes and methods are at fault here. Ghost writers have value. KU has value. Independent writers have value. Traditionally published authors have value. We shouldn’t feel guilty for being part of any of those groups or blame them directly. In this particular instance, a person chose to do something quite wrong – she put her name on something and took credit for it, knowing that she didn’t deserve it. Unfortunately, modern tech allows all sorts of loopholes that didn’t exist in the past. But people still cheated the systems and ripped off readers and authors. I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing that since before Gutenberg creating his printing press.
At least modern tech also offers us the ability to share information with each other. That’s certainly a positive. I don’t use KU myself because I prefer to pay an another directly for work I enjoy – it’s a type of relationship I understand. If I don’t like it, I don’t continue buying their work. I buy lots of short indie books, including those with trendy topics like aliens or shifters (or shifting aliens). I also buy a lot of traditionally published books. I think they both have their places, although I really do wish there were more good editors in the world. They are worth their weight in gold, but clearly hard to find. Back in the day, I used to get Loveswept books in the mail. Some were terrible and others were keepers. I buy as many books as I can afford and there are always more on my list.
This is essentially the same problem as we have with many products we purchase online, right? For example, if anyone knows where I can purchase good quality flat silk hand embroidery thread, please post a reply to this comment. Sure, Amazon, Etsy and a variety of other sites list it, but is it good quality or is it a ball of random tangled strands of something? I have to order it online via a store across the US from me, who in turn orders it from the manufacturer in Europe. And this isn’t a new process. My grandmother had to order good quality embroidery thread from a catalog and her grandmother ordered it from a different catalog company. But now I digress…
Thistle Threads is one source for silk. She offers some online classes – not cheap but very interesting and sources a lot of interesting fiber for them. You can just order threads- don’t have to take a class from her.
I taught middle and high school English for twenty-seven years between Texas and Maryland. In my last years of teaching British Literature to seniors, I had a rash of students who plagiarized by going online and copying/rewording other people’s papers.
One female student turned in a paper that was above her writing ability, so I typed one line from HER paper into my search engine and found the paper that the line was taken from. She copied everything verbatim – including all of the formatting. I took her paper and my print out to my department chair and informed her that I was failing the student. Believe it or not, my department chair had to defend my decision to the administration because the student in question was a senior and a minority and they wanted her to pass so that it didn’t affect the school’s stats for graduation! My boss won that battle, and the student didn’t graduate until latter in the summer when she had to take the class again.
It boggles my mind that people fail to see a problem when there are a lack of standards. I used the above incident as an example for several years so that students in my class would understand that there ARE consequences for cheating. I’m sorry to say that I’m not surprised that an adult has CHEATED on a couple of levels (plagiarized and paid someone to write the book for her without supervision). What I am surprised about is that her book was put in for an award! Did anyone read the book before submission? Apparently not, huh?
I’ve noticed copied covers (from editions I’ve read of Lilith Saintcrow’s Watcher series and Shelly Laurenston’s Call of Crows series) being promoted to me in Kindle stuff, but for all I know, that’s the cover artist legitimately re-selling their work (no clue how that works). That level of jacking content is obscene.
I have a couple of kindle books with the same model, sometimes same pose on their covers. I think they just sell that guy over and over ?. I read Shelly’s books too, love her humor
This sounds like an old episode of Midsomer Murders. It all came out at a literary guild convention. Not many people lived.
But seriously this is real and it is shameful. It causes damage in so many ways and harms many talented professionals in the industry. I think your approach to bringing awareness of this fraud is spot on and will help your fellow authors. Please keep us posted.
I would have thought it would have shown up faster due to all the social media in the world these days.
It seems there are dishonest people in every field.
A plague upon all their houses.
Annoying that the Kindle U program doesn’t do more to detect and down-promote plagiarized content. Amazon is great at machine learning and finding common trends (if you like A you might like B). They’d be able to detect extensive copyright infringement if they decided to fund such a feature.
Amazon isn’t held liable for the copyright infringement as long as they take down the offending title. Yes, the author is the one that plagiarized, but just like a third party seller adding fakes to the Amazon fulfilled inventory, shouldn’t they also protect their digital inventory a little better? How much business would it really cost them as they’d still be the top dog in indie publishing? Or is so much content plagiarized that they won’t release such a feature as it would impact their bottom line?
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/06/plagiarism-in-the-age-of-self-publishing/485525/
The so called author stole others work (or parts thereof). It’s STOLEN. and Amazon helped her sell it. Doesn’t that make them a fence for selling stolen property? It certainly makes them offensive.
I’m shaking my head over the stupidity of people trying to rip off others. When I was in school and had to write papers, the first thing all my professors told the class was “if you have any question about using other people’s work (either directly or indirectly), you MUST reference the person or people who wrote it”. In my doctoral program, the School of Public Health I was in told all students that the professor had the right to search online anyone’s paper if there was any question about plagiarism. By the time I finished my dissertation, I had almost 100 references (this shocked my dissertation committee). 😀
Either she’s a thief or a fraud and Either way it should be illegal.
This is so disgusting to me. I live to read. I buy books and check them out of the library constantly. I have not used KU because I don’t really care for Amazon for personal reasons. My brother in law has self published in Amazon and that’s the only reason I have a Kindle account. Most of the books I get thrown at my by Kindle sound like other authors I love, including our beloved AuthorLords. I refuse to take the bait. It may make me a snob, but I’m not budging.
Real authors give up blood, sweat and tears for their writing and they deserve the accolades for their hard work. Plagiarism is the work of the devil. Period.
I remember many years ago when Janet Dailey was found guilty of plagiarizing from another author, I think Johanna Lindsey. It was HUGE scandal at the time here as Dailey was a local author. I believe it was several pages. This person sounds like she basically pasted together content from other books just to churn content. And no, I don’t believe the ghostwriter excuse. Pretty convenient that the “ghostwriter” suddenly disappeared.
It was Nora Roberts she plagiarized. Apparently this one has plagiarized Roberts as well.
Thanks. I knew that wasn’t quite right!
Wow! I am a professional grant writer and I have come across entire sections of grant proposals that I wrote that were used in someone else’s grant application, but I never realized it was so blatant in literature.
I say GO GET EM! Writing is an art and artist should get credit for their own art. Stealing us wrong. End of story. Do your own work for goodness sakes.
No sympathy here for the thief’s
At my high school, plagiarism got you a “0” – not even an “F”, and a trip to the Dean’s office followed by a letter sent home to your parents. Of course, this was in a previous century (1972 – 1976)….
The college I went to could, and did, expell people for all forms of cheating.
This “author” should be embarrassed, and certainly owes apologies and financial reparations.
I’m disgusted that gifted writers have their work plagiarized. There is NO excuse that can justify it. These thieves should be sued and readers should shun any author who has stolen another’s work.
That’s less “my dog ate my homework” and more “I paid someone to do my homework, and didn’t know they copied off someone else.”
And up until now, I thought ghostwriters were only paid to continue the legacy and stories of deceased writers like V.C. Andrews, or for prolific book series (all things Sweet Valley and of debatable quality, but with a brand to protect.)
I didn’t know regular people paid others to write just for vanity’s sake and phony bragging rights.
Book is off amazon, author’s (and I mean it in the loosest sense of the word) website down, twitter account MIA.
Is it me or is this Christiane running for the hills?
Well no wonder, she probably has, besides a lawyer and REAL author after her, also said author’s own BDH equivalent. Never underestimate the power of BDHs, lol.
So sorry for Courtney, I love her books and Duchess War is so full of emotions that I’ve deeply felt when reading it. But I am glad this CS person got caught.
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/