Fated: The Vampire Plagiarism?

So... there's a new "Author Behaving Badly" in the neighborhood and her name is Alexandra Anthony.

Recently it was brought to light that Ms Anthony had plagiarized the True Blood fanfiction Pretty Kitty by fanfiction author ficlit78. Ficlit78 had published Pretty Kitty on Fanfiction.net in February 2011.

A little over a year later, Anthony published Fated, the first book in the The Vampire Destiny series, in May 2012. She continued putting out books in the series until June 2013 and was set to release a fifth book entitled Rapture in April 2014, but this never came to fruition. During this time the series not only got a mention in USA Today, but also apparently won a few awards as well. I cannot find any records of the books actually winning any awards, although I did find where Ascend was nominated for a Book Junkie's Choice Award.

Her plagiarism went fairly unnoticed until a few days ago when ficlit78 posted a blog article entitled Plagiarism for Profit, where she described finding that Anthony had been plagiarizing her work and demanding that Anthony remove any and all copies of TVD series from any storefronts she'd been publishing through.

It didn't take long for people to discover this via book review sites like Goodreads and some, like reviewer Chrome, posted comparisons of the two works and links for readers to see the comparisons themselves. In one link Anthony posted a book snippet that matches up with chapter six of Pretty Kitty. Anthony has removed the page, but I was able to pull up a cached copy (which you can find here). It's pretty clearly plagiarized and I've taken two specific sections from the cached webpage and Pretty Kitty, chapter 6. (I took the text directly from the Fanfic.net page.) While Anthony changed a little here and there, it's still pretty obviously taken directly from Pretty Kitty. 

I can't help but be reminded of a similar thing that happened a few years ago with How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The author of that work lifted heavily from several authors and tried to claim that she did it subconsciously. (eyeroll) I wonder if Anthony will try claiming the same thing. Either way, it's always infuriating to see someone try to gain fame from someone else's hard work. It's not only an insult to the original author of the work that Anthony (and others) don't think that they will be caught, but it's also an insult to anyone who reads it. Not only do they assume that you (the reader) won't pick up on the plagiarism (ie, they think that they're too slick, the source material might be too obscure, and you're too dense to know otherwise), but they're also telling you that they don't think that you're worth the hard work it takes to write an original work. They're not publishing this for you to enjoy and they're not thinking of you at all. They see you as nothing more than a money tree that they can shake down for dollars and the occasional ego boost. It's absolutely disgusting, in my opinion.

So far the book has been removed from several different sites, although I do note that Barnes & Nobles is still selling ebook copies of Fated and Illusion. I'm going to hope that this is only because the website is slow at removing items from their shelves.


Further Reading:

• Pretty Kitty (Fanfiction.net)
• Plagiarism for Profit (ficlit78)
• Cached copy of an excerpt from TVD series
• Pretty Kitty, chapter 6
• It's time to put some paranormal activity into your reading (USA Today)
• Chrome's review, with excerpt comparisons
• An Amazon review by TheLadyKT that gives a more in-depth comparison

Plagiarism on Amazon? Say it isn't so!

Amazon has never been a stranger to controversy or criticism. Whether it's the conditions of warehouse workers or the selling of a controversial book aimed towards pedophiles, odds are you've heard Amazon's name used in an unflattering news story.

Well, get ready for one of their newest situations: erotica plagiarism. Yep, plagiarism. It's one of the worst sins you can commit in publishing and according to some news sources, it's rampant. (Click here for one such news article.)

It was recently discovered that self-published "authors" such as Maria Cruz have been stealing stories from sites such as Literotica and passing it off as their own work. Cruz also plagiarized Bram Stoker's Dracula, a pretty gutsy move when you figure that it's a book that much of the literary world is at least passingly familiar with.

It's not only Literotica and Bram Stoker getting ripped off either. Another "author" named Jazmyne DeLyte (see her Amazon profile here) took the text of Victorian era novel Romance of Lust (written between the years 1873–1876), retitled it A Classic Victorian Erotic Novel, and never once stated that it was actually a public domain novel, choosing instead to pass it off as her own work. While it's not illegal to plagiarize public domain novels (see an explanation here), it is extremely unethical and is something that will eventually come back to bite you in the rump later on if/when you choose to try to publish something you actually wrote. Imagine trying to explain to your agent why you chose to misrepresent yourself and lie about things you actually wrote, especially after they (or a potential publisher) discovered the ruse! The old saying "you'll never work in this town (or at least in this publishing company) again" would probably apply. I don't have a problem with people selling copies of public domain works, just a problem with people trying to pass it off as something they wrote themselves. And yes, "forgetting" to state that you didn't write the book or "accidentally" submitting it incorrectly is plagiarism.

When the writing falls into a public site such as Literotica, the copyright is rather a tricky subject. What if the book was written anonymously or under a screen name? The author would have to find a way to prove that he or she was the actual writer of the tale. Then you come to another tricky subject: where you live. Some countries give you automatic copyrights under the Berne Convention, some don't. If you do live in one of these countries you will have some protection. If you don't, then it's all up to whether or not you applied to have your work copyrighted. WIPO says that you have the copyright to something the moment you finished writing it, but it can get tricky in the countries that don't follow the Berne Convention. So in other words, if it went to court it'd be a tricky thing to prove. Not impossible, but so difficult that many wouldn't have the money or time to invest in a lawsuit.

So what can we do about people like this? We do what we can. We comment in their book forums, stating that the book is plagiarized and state the source. We make a point to never purchase their books, not even the ones they actually wrote. (How could you ever know if they weren't ripping off someone else's work?) We tell our friends about it, especially those who are likely to purchase that person's work. Word of mouth can do a lot. And most importantly, we alert the website about the plagiarism. Again, it's not illegal to plagiarize a public domain works but many websites would rather remove the offending work than to keep them available for sale. It gives them a bad image, which is bad for business.

If you're curious, there's a whole thread about this over on Amazon. This is a really good example of how spreading the word about plagiarists can help get their books removed, as this thread was responsible for many of the plagiarized Literotica books getting removed from Amazon. (See the thread here.)

I'm honestly pretty disgusted by this. In my opinion plagiarism is no better than being a pickpocket. In the end you're still stealing something that belongs to someone else, even if it is in the public domain. These authors have to remember that they should treat other people's works the same way they want theirs to be treated: with respect, and passing off someone else work as your own shows a serious lack of respect for not only yourself, but also your readers and literature in general.