Plagiarizing! Embarrassment! Reputations Ruined!

Hey Everyone!

I have some apologizing to do!  However, before I go on, I want you all to know...I HONESTLY HAD NO IDEA!!

So as some of you may have heard, a horrible act of plagiarism in the book world, and I unfortunately have been unintentionally (on my part) became involved!


A few weeks ago, I received an email from the author accused of these allegations.  She first found me on Facebook asking me to promote her novel, and then emailed me.  I was excited to help, because I love helping indie authors get out their books into the world.  I never thought something like this would happen!

Well, my post went up on her books release date.

I will admit, I did not get a chance to read it.  I have also never read the book that was plagiarized, even though I believe I bought it for my Kindle when I first got it, but due to too many books that need to be read, it just never made it to the top of the list.

I have since deleted the promotion post, and honestly right now, I'm questioning whether or not I should be accepting anymore books from indie authors to promote.  This is NOT me saying I'm accusing all Indie authors of plagiarizing! OH NOT AT ALL!! I swear!!

It is just that my reputation is on the line here!  Including all of the other bloggers that this author emailed and got to join in on her blog tour!!

The Romance Bookie is my baby!  I have worked my butt off to where I am right now!! It's taken over two and a half years, and honestly I'm still working towards more!  I do not need some author, blogger, or anyone else ruining that for me!

I am not saying all indie authors are like this author...not at all!  I'm just worried!  What would happen if this happened again?!  I could get hate messages!  I am a good person, and would never want to ruin anyone's reputation, so I find this to be 100% unacceptable!!

At first, when I read the article I was thinking, "Who knows?  Maybe it's just some jealous person who was trying to take down another author?"  But then I went on this authors Twitter page, Facebook page...and guess what? ALL DELETED!! They no longer exist!

That's extremely suspicious behavior right there, in my opinion!!

Anyway, the point of this post...it's sad how one author could do this! Because not only did this author ruin her reputation FOREVER!! she could have also ruined a lot of blogs out there!  We've had enough of these plagiarizing scandals, here in the book blogging world! We don't need any more!!

The Romance Bookie 

PS: BTW on a happier note...Meg-A Readers starts on Tuesday!!

Comments

  1. I'm sorry to hear this. I got Easy in my TBR pile but I hadn't heard of this other book -honestly, I've been quite out of the loop.

    But I understand, it's so hard with indie authors, because you can't generalize either way and sometimes you just don't know what you're getting yourself into.

    Plus, I feel really bad when I can't get to their books quickly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I'm in the exact same boat! It's tough! I will say though, some of my favorite authors are Indie authors, so I definitely don't want to rationalize everyone into that same spot, but it does get difficult!

      Delete
  2. Doesn't Meg a readers start now?? I have my post for tomorrow.... If not email me.

    And what author was this?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Okay, calm down! It happens so very easily these days and was

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sorry, another screen freeze!

    Anyway, let me tell you about a major incidence of plagiarism and other things that happened here in Oz some years ago. There was this woman who called herself Helen Demidenko. She wrote a novel that won about a million prizes and was praised to the skies by every big literary critic in the country. She claimed to be Ukrainian and that this novel, which was set during WWII, was based on her family history.

    And didn't everyone have egg on their faces when it turned out to be a load of bull! She was not Ukrainian at all, but British, her name was Helen Darville and large chunks of the book had been plagiarised.

    Of course, she still had her defenders and she managed to sell some more articles, and then, guess what? They were plagiarised too!

    The last I heard of her, she'd sold one of those prizes she won and used the money to fund her studies in law, of all things.

    More recently, there was the woman who claimed to be Jordanian, despite her American accent, and sold oodles of books that were about an honour killing that had supposedly happened to someone she knew. She fooled a lot of people too.

    So you see, if big name people in literature and newspapers can be taken in, why shouldn't you? Don't stress. You were caught out because you were kind and generous with your time.

    I have to admit, I don't have much to do with "indie" authors, mainly because there's no way to know how good or bad a book will be before you get it( and they keep offering me ebooks, which I can't put on my library shelves) and even though some books published by big presses are also dreadful, there's a filtering process. But some people with a track record and the respect of readers decide to self publish; I will help out those.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes I'm concerned about that now when it comes to Indie authors. I won't be giving up completely on them, but definitely not as many as I used to.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

Marriage Vacation by Pauline Turner Brooks (aka Jo Piazza)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick