Plagiarism

You should never write anything good... because someone will steal it.

I started writing novels 29 years ago. In that time I have written 29 novels to completion. Naturally, not all of those novels have been worth publishing, even from an independent novelist's point of view. But, over a dozen have been and it has become a common occurrence for me to deal with plagiarism. Joy. Let's talk about it.

Plagiarism is discovered in two ways. Either I find it on my own or someone sends me a polite email telling me it's happened.

One time, someone contacted me because they had purchased a paperback book on Amazon that was supposed to be a fictional book mentioned in the TV series, You. When it arrived, it had the cover it was supposed to have according to the TV show. When they opened it up, the book was actually Whenever You Want by Stephanie Van Orman. They googled me, found my email address, and sent me an email about it. I found the book on Amazon, reported the book, and it was removed.

Amazon has always been very nice about my plagiarism claims. But I have lost track of how many times my books have been copied and sold for crazy prices on Amazon.

Lately, I found that some guy had taken a few of my books, and a bunch of others off OBOOKO, made them into audiobooks, and put them up on YouTube. I contacted YouTube and YouTube was as gracious as Amazon and removed the content promptly.

Interestingly, I got in touch with all of my fellow authors on OBOOKO and sent them messages regarding the copyright infringement (at least he wasn't claiming that the books were written by anyone other than the authors). I received responses from two. One thanked me. The second one told me that plagiarism was a regular problem and they couldn't be bothered to fight it. They continued to say that YouTube had probably taken care of the poster and they didn't need to do anything more.

Hmm... I really disagreed with her. That poster had a lot more books posted than just what they had posted of our stuff off OBOOKO. I told her that I doubted YouTube removed the poster based on just my complaint. Everyone needed to complain.

She hasn't responded.

Which... Makes me kind of curious to know if she also plagiarised her book and therefore isn't too concerned.

Today, I got a message that two of my books (Rose Red and Sleeping Prince) were ripped off by someone who posted them on Inkitt with a different author name, and a few of the character names changed. I checked it out. They changed Harrison's name to Simon. LAME! Based on my two books only, they were amassing followers and getting reviews. But why?

This is where I get confused. Inkitt is a free platform. The $14.99 ebooks on Amazon make sense to me. The YouTube post where you can earn money from hits makes sense. Posting to Inkitt doesn't make sense to me. It is possible for a writer to get a contract with Inkitt's publishing company Galatea, but I haven't heard that they've been dishing out many contracts lately. I've had a contract with Galatea (it was awesome), but I haven't been offered one for Rose Red or Sleeping Prince (both are posted on Inkitt). Anyway, I can't think of any benefit for claiming you wrote books you didn't in order to post them on free platforms. It doesn't make sense to me.

The thing about plagiarism is that it really is endless... and it doesn't do any good to cry over it or get your panties bunched up. Just buy the copyright certificates for your books and flourish them whenever you need to inflict pain on someone who has stolen your book.

But whatever you do... Don't think about it until it comes up. Then deal with it and when you're in the midst of it and there's nothing more you can do at the moment... Don't think about it. When it's over and you've won... Don't think about it. Stressing about it will not help anything. Just be brave and rational. Continue to write great things even though they occasionally get stolen.