Laura Harner's written 75 books in the past five years. Except...some were "based on a novel" by SOMEBODY ELSE.
That includes Becky McGraw, who gave out with a "HOLY CRAP!" when she found out.
I've been plagiarized too, Becky. I've gotten lawyers involved and gotten settlements. I remember the first time it happened, my lawyer said, "Well, what are your damages? Can you prove the plagiarism interfered with sales of your book?"
I said, "No, of course not, the books aren't in competition. My damages are that I'm pissed off, and I don't like being somebody's unwilling partner or ghost-writer. I did the research and somebody else gets a paycheck for it? I want half his advance...and how about punitive damages?"
My cases involved non-fiction. The authors couldn't find information so they went to my books and copied everything off, changing a word here or there and making the big mistake of not crediting me. A few lines of "according to author Ronald L. Smith" or "as quote in Ronald L. Smith's book..." would've made a big difference.
As for fiction, there are hack genres (romance, erotica, sci-fi, westerns) where you're expected to simply knock out purple prose or a load of cliche-ridden drivel WITHOUT resorting to the arduous task of copying/adapting/plagiarizing someone else.
It's quite pathetic when you can't simply make-up stuff (maybe steal the plot line if you must) and instead go about "adapting" every paragraph.
I'm not plagiarizing. Am I? I'm giving credit to the original source, the Daily Mail. I'm also not profiting in any way, as this website has no advertising.
Harner's excuse would be, what, that her market is "gay" fiction and so she's not competing with McGraw? True, but she's using McGraw's creativity and making her an unwilling partner. Ethics and morality aside, what Harner's done involves illegal financial gain.
It's fortunate that social media helped Becky McGraw become aware of the problem. Back in the old days, an author might not spot plagiarism except by pure accident. In one case, I was browsing a book on comedians and noticed my own writing. With no credit. In another, it was my father who bought a book and said, as a compliment, "This author obviously read your book!" HUH??
What is most unfortunate, is that the Internet is destroying book sales and allowing parasites to prosper. Why would Harner be tossing out 75 books in 5 years, except that volume is the only way she can make money? Sites such as Amazon, that might pay a dollar in royalty on an eBook, are not going to be selling more than a few hundred or a few thousand copies of somebody's niche novel. The odds keep getting lower as more and more amateur idiots flood the site with badly written garbage, and "novels" that are often less than 10,000 words.
It's possible Harner would've been less blatant if she didn't have to knock out so much for so little.
A related problem is that on EBAY, self-publishing authors are throwing their titles out there hoping for sales, and many "authors" are simply taking public domain material and putting their name on it. Some grab every article they can Google, cobble it together as an e-book or print-on-demand title, and figure no author is going to notice or be able to do much about it.
In my two cases, after all, my lawyers were dealing with actual published books from real New York-based companies. They weren't trying to track down somebody offering eBooks from a tiny town somewhere, or by somebody on eBay muddying the waters by using Sri Lanka as an address. Today? A lawyer would probably try to shake down Amazon for aiding and abetting theft (which could possibly be defended with the Digital Millennium Act's "we're just a venue" excuse). A lawyer might also be able to go after the credit card company that was accepting payment, as well as the author, and have that money re-directed to the injured party.
Oh. As for punitive damages, I was disappointed to learn that this is a gray area. "You have to prove malice," I was told. "You have to prove that it was not just some kind of mistake or innocent error in judgment." Then again, don't judges sometimes award such damages, as a warning to others that ignorance of the law is no excuse?
Re-writing pulp fiction? Oh, for shame, Laura Harner, for shame.
What next, copying stuff from Nora Roberts? "HOLY CRAP" indeed.
