9. Don’t plagairize someone famous. The more popular the author, the more likely your plagiarism will be caught out. Try to find someone obscure.

8. Don’t blame it on depression or physical disability, i.e., wheelchair bound stroke victims. Only because that insults wheelchair bound stroke victims everywhere.

7. Don’t set up a website and post the plagiaristic material. If it is on the web, someone is bound to find it, particularly when google indexes it.

6. Don’t do interviews. Again, the more people that hear about you, the more likely that your stealing will be sussed out. Try to rip as many people off before the gig is up.

5. Don’t steal from rich authors. These people are more likely than the poor obscure authors to be able to hire lawyers to sue you into oblivion.

4. Don’t copy word for word. It’s harder to catch out your theft if you mix it up a bit. Maybe try the word randomizer.

3. Don’t advertise as writing “because I feel each person has something unique to share with the world and writing is my gift to share” when, in fact, your uniqueness is actually some other person’s uniqueness.

2. Don’t send to reviewers who are known as “mean girls” because they might make up a top ten list just to mock your stealing and then your gig will really be up.

1. Don’t publish it, particularly as a POD option since it doesn’t really make sense to pay for your own stealing. It kind of defeats the purpose of stealing in the first place.

***

Text from the Prologue of “Of Atlantis”
By Lanaia Lee

From Conception to Devastation

The golden-haired child sat alone, as he usually did, and wondered whether his Father would die today. Some distance away, across the royal gardens , his nurse was talking to the two sentries who guarded him during the hours of daylight. The soldiers, grim eyed warriors, did not look at him and shifted nervously as he approached.
Archimedes was used to this reaction. Even at four he understood it.
He remembered with sadness the day three weeks ago when his Father, garbed for war, had walked along this same garden path, his cuirass gleaming in the sunlight. It was so beautiful that Alexander had reached out to touch the gleaming plates of iron, edged with gold, six golden lions on the breast. But as his hand came forward his Father moved swiftly back.
"Don't touch me boy!" he snapped.
"I would not hurt you, Father," whispered the prince, staring up at the black-bearded face, with its blind right eye like a huge opal beneath the savagely scarred brow.
"I came to say goodbye," muttered Lionus, "and to tell you to be good. Learn your lessons well.– 
"Will you win?" the child asked.
"Win or die, boy, " answered the King, kneeling to face his son. He appeared to relax, though his expression remained stern. "There are those that think I cannot win. They remember Onomarchus defeated me when we last met.

* * *

Picture of the text from David Gemmell’s Dark Prince.

Related posts:

1. Overheard: Dont introduce me …

1. If you are an author and you want to vent, you should do so privately or, at least, don’t include so many facts that people can “out” you. Part of me cries “hijinks” on the latest post at the Vent Club, but the other part of me says “lets try to guess the poster’s identity.” I’m thinking that one of the factors below is a lie, if this is not a hoax and #2 and #5 would be my guesses for a lie.
   • Romance writer with one of the big publishers.
   • Not a bestseller but paperbacks sell in the 200K range
   • Won a few awards; have name recognition.
   • Repped by a male agent.
   • Historical.
2. No matter how high of a rating your book gets from RT, you should not, as an author, go from blog to blog, making a comment about your newest book, your last book, because even if your book did receive 4 stars at RT or 10 stars at iloveyourbooks.com or 18 coffee mugs at readerslovecoffee.com, the seemingly non stop self promotion only serves to turn readers off. Blog comments aren’t a place to advertise your wares. The comments are a place to participate in conversation and if you add smart comments, readers will be interested. If not, you appear like a spammer. And spammers, well, they get deleted. Of course, on this blog, if you are BevBB or Sarah McCarty, the spam filter thinks you are spammers too. I haven’t figured that one out. Sorry guys.
3. If you have a guest column on Romancing the Blog, please do not write about how to deal with negative reviews. It is as if authors have nothing else to say despite the fact that you weave stories for a living. There seems to be a panoply of topics such as why you dress your heroine in high heels if she is in an action book; why urban fantasy seems to encompass any first person female fantasy story regardless of whether the setting is urban or fantasy; or why jelly bellies are the world’s best source of inspiration. Complaints about negative reviews makes me want to poke my eyes out and my eyes are already sore from poking them during a book I read over the weekend.
4. If you have a guest column at Romancing the Blog, please do not write about topics which make fun of readers, even your stupid, crazy ones, because it makes readers wonder if you are mocking them as well. (This post has since been deleted but was at this link and called “The Beast in the Machine.”). You probably are mocking alot of your readers and probably alot of readers deserve it, but don’t make it so evident.
5. If you have a secret blog which no one else can be a part of, it doesn’t really make sense to blog about your secret blog and how no one else can be a part of it and how no one else should talk about it to avoid the flaunt factor under the guise of telling others how to set up a secret blog. Even if the secret blog could be super helpful, which I am sure it is. Doesn’t blogging about it kind of fly in the face of the don’t talk about it instruction? I mean, the first rule of Fight Club is “you do not talk about Fight Club.” (and also the second rule. And if you haven’t seen the penis song sung by Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, you haven’t seen troo magic.)

6. Please do not sign your online posts and amazon blogs with references to animals or intimate physical contact. I.e., Hugs and Kitties or SWAK. I think it does something to your credibility, or your standing as an adult woman. It simply conjures up gum snapping and gel pens instead of serious emotional writing. (Note, I have nothing against gel pens or hugs or kitties. Well, okay, I admit to not being much of a hugger. More of one armed, pat you on the back sort of uncomfortable ha ha nice to see you again you sort of hugger.).
7. Please don’t get excited if Brad Pitt or Josh Holloway “friend” you on Myspace because that is not the real Brad Pitt or Josh Holloway. It’s someone posing as a famous person or just an homage. I am sure that if Brad Pitt had read your books and had time to maintain a myspace page and friend a random erotic romance author, he totally would. But alas, I think in between fathering his many children and acting out his own erotic romance scenes with Angelina Jolie, he probably isn’t out on the internet friending people. I could be totally wrong about this.
8. If you have a sucky cover, you should own it like Suzanne Brockmann rather than squeeing about it because then readers start wondering at your taste level and if the author thinks this is a really good cover, what cheesetastic offerings are inside?
9. If you have a blog and a website and don’t keep the website updated, you will have readers cursing you. Some of you authors still have really bad websites with no future information (I know this because the bloggers inputting at Romantic Advances are having a hard time finding blurbs). Julie Garwood, I doubt you read here, but yours is virtually unusable. It’s like trying to navigate a circus fun house which is great if you are at the circus and don’t mind getting lost and seeing distorted images, but not so great if you are a reader trying to find out which books are interrelated. Or whether you even have books. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around the cover page trying to figure out where the “backlist” link might be.
10. Do not, under any circumstances, pretend to be a reader and recommend your own books. We blog owners might be slow but we aren’t stupid. If you come onto my blog and do it again, I’ll out you. I can’t say anything even remotely funny about this because it isn’t funny and it is the cause of this whole PSA but I felt like it would be a very short article if I included just one item.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Private Undoing of a Public Servant by Leoni Martell
2. Romance Publishers Promises to Romance Readers Part 3: Good Authors Gone Bad
3. Romance Publishers Promises to Romance Readers Part 1: False Promises