Plagiarism is a Crime!

A fellow author's life has been turned topsy-turvy this week. She was contacted by a total stranger, a book review blogger, who told her that her Christian novel, A Bid for Love (formerly entitled Love to the Highest Bidder), had possibly been plagiarized.

The author is Rachel Ann Nunes. Get her account of the bizarre events here.

When is it okay to copy/paste an author's work, change the point of view to First Person, add a lot of smut, send out tons of ARCs to get glowing reviews, and schedule the book to be published? Actually, I must qualify that to say "published in the US," because the fraudulent work was already for sale in the UK (See Rachel's blog post for evidence).

I answer: NEVER!

This is never okay.

Adapting an idea or a story from Shakespeare or Jane Austen to give it a contemporary update or to add a twist aka the mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith, is totally different.

Stealing an author's work is criminal behavior. We must take a stand against such corruption. Author Danyelle Ferguson has posted avatars/buttons in her photo album "Awareness" that you may use on your Facebook profile and elsewhere. Many Facebook inhabitants and bloggers are spreading the word about this theft of intellectual property. I urge you to help in quashing malevolent tendencies and/or outright ignorance by sharing your opinions about plagiarism on your blogs, Facebook, or whatever social media you employ.

Thank you!