A company called Edson.financial.group has a books and music and other media ebay store. Over 200 products are reviewed, however, it has been discovered that many of those reviews are copied word for word from reviewers on Amazon. Jennifer Ray from Wild on Books Reviews has had three reviews copied and reposted under [...]

Late Friday, AP reporter, Hillel Italie reported that Signet/NAL has severed its relationship with Cassie Edwards. Since we made a bit deal, here on the blog, about how appalling Signet/NAL’s initial response was, I thought it would be fair to give over our Sunday to say how awesome I think its final response is.
For [...]

Sarah just sent me the link to the news release that Signet and Cassie Edwards are no longer in business together.
“Signet has conducted an extensive review of all its Cassie Edwards novels and due to irreconcilable editorial differences, Ms. Edwards and Signet have mutually agreed to part ways,” the publisher said in a statement Friday.
“Cassie [...]

As you can tell by the title, my impatience with publishers is rising. Their loose association with integrity becomes more evident every day. Last week, it was discovered that Lonely Planet, a travel guide publisher, was putting out books by an author who a) plagiarized and b) didn’t even travel to the places [...]

Lonely Planet travel guide author Thomas Kohnstamm admits to plagiarizing parts of travel guides for  Lonely Planet, not actually going to the places reported in his books, and by taking money and perks from the travel industry.
Kohnstamm never even went to Colombia instead, “I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from [...]

It only took a week to debunk supposed memoir Love and Consequences by Margaret B Jones. L&C was a story about Margaret’s “life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.”
The author, Margaret Seltzer, is a) all white b) [...]

moar funny pictures
In tuth, in literature, in science and in art, there are, and can be, few, if any, things, which in an abstract sense, are strictly new and original throughout. Every book in literature, science and art, borrows, and must necessarily borrow, and use much which was well known and used before.
Justice Story in [...]

In one of the most positive things to come out of Savage Gate, heavyweight authors Bertrice Small, Roberta Gellis and Jennifer Blake will be teaching a new seminar at the 2008 Romantic Times about writing a historical without plagiarism.
While the change has not yet appeared on the RT BookLovers Convention webpage, Bitchery reader Kay has [...]

moar funny pictures
After weeks of thinking, whining, ranting, and being generally disoriented in the aftermath of Savage Gate (phrase courtesy of Seressia Glass), it finally dawned on me that all of the brouhaha, both with the plagiarism thing and the mean girl thing, is all about boundaries (yes, I know I’m slow). Where does [...]

New York Press debuted a new sex column yesterday authored by Claudia Lonow who, rather than thinking up her own weird sex question or asking her friends to make one up, copied the questions from a 2006 Dan Savage column.  Savage Love is published online in The Onion’s A.V. Club and, according to Wikipedia is [...]

It’s clear from emails, message boards, forums, and blogs that there is no common language that we speak, either readers or authors or both, as to what plagiarism is and is not within the fiction writing community.
There is a fear amongst authors that some readers are trying to set the bar too high. [...]

I read more than a few posts, emails, bulletin board messages that no one was hurt by the a plagiarist but the plagiarist herself. In reading about the authors of the works that were copied, I couldn’t help but to be moved by their individual stories and how important their contribution was to [...]

Newsweek ran a web special edition written by author Paul Tolme. Mr. Tolme penned a copyrighted article “Toughing It Out in the Badlands” that ran in the Defenders Magazine. Cassie Edwards copied some language from the article in her most recent Penguin release, Shadow Bear.
In the Internet age, every freelance writer fears that [...]

A lot of questions have been asked over the past week about what is and isn’t plagiarism, and what kinds of standards of attribution we should expect in fiction. While I don’t think readers are necessarily in a position to initiate this discussion, since it was readers who found the similarities between Cassie Edwards’s [...]

Commenter at Smart Bitches, provided a copy of the following which is alleged to be the response of Cassie Edwards which she sent to a fan. Dear Author has contacted both the fan and Cassie Edwards for a response but has received neither a denial nor a confirmation.

Updated to add: DA contacted, via [...]

edited to add: Cassie Edwards website is now taken down. It redirects to the myspace page.
You might be suffering from Cassie Edwards plagiarism fatigue but because of what I have read on the internet in various places, from both authors and readers, I think I need to post this example. One of the [...]

Felicia Lee, reporter from the Times, provided an excellent summary of the Cassie Edwards plagiarism issue that broke on the blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. While some around the community believe that exposure of this issue is a black eye on romance, I think the majority of the response showed the genre to a good [...]

Over the past few days, some have lamented the fact that it was the Smart Bitches who broke the Cassie Edwards story, because they are not “neutral” enough where Edwards is concerned.
I don’t think anyone could argue seriously that the Smart Bitches are neutral about Cassie Edwards (although if you take a look at Candy’s [...]

Given the statement by Ms. Edwards that she took materials but didn’t realize that you need to footnote it; the original Signet response that her use was fair use and the fact that the original sources were mostly public domain, it’s illuminating and disturbing to see the following by commenter Em at the SBTB [...]

From: xxxx.penguingroup.com
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 1:02 PM
To: Jane Litte
Subject: New Cassie Edwards statement
Dear Jane,
Please find below a new statement from Signet re: the Cassie Edwards’ situation.
Our original comments were based on Signet’s review of a limited selection of passages. We believe the situation deserves further review. Therefore we will be examining all of [...]

Jan 7, 2008 the Smart Bitches Trashy Books site post examples of text from several Cassie Edwards’ novels and the sources from which they might be copied. SB Sarah has combined all the comparisons into one easy to read PDF. List of links:

Shadow Bear
Savage Longings
Running Fox, Part 1 and Part 2
Savage Moon
Savage Beloved

Jan 8, [...]

I have been tempted so many times to boycott an author or publisher, especially when I come across 200 page $22 hardcovers or a serial lack of copyediting. But in this case, in the aftermath of Signet’s response to the revelations regarding Cassie Edwards, I do not think boycotting is the best choice.
It seems [...]

There are heated discussions on various loops and blogs regarding the accusations of plagiarism against a published romance author. Some questions have also been raised regarding RWA’s stand on the matter. To be clear, RWA does not condone plagiarism or any type of copyright infringement. (Please see RWA’s Code of Ethics http://www.rwanational.org/cs/code_of_ethics).
RWA takes all accusations [...]

Dear Mr. Shanks, CEO of Penguin, and Susan Peterson Kennedy, President of Penguin:
I am writing to share with you my disilllusionment with your publishing house after the response you gave to the allegations of plagiarism against Signet author, Cassie Edwards.
As a reader, when I buy a book, I assume that my money is spent paying [...]

AP writer Hillel Italie obtain a statement and response from Cassie Edwards on the plagiarism charges.
“When you write historical romances, you’re not asked to do that,” Cassie Edwards told The Associated Press, speaking earlier this week from her home in Mattoon, Ill.
Edwards husband then chimed in with this defense:
“She doesn’t lift passages,” Charles Edwards said, [...]

Edited to add my inquiry: Apparently some are taking umbrage that I posted the Signet response but not my own email inquiry. I will say that I had permission to post the Signet response but I don’t mind adding my inquiry:
Dear Mr. [name redacted at the request of the responder]:
I was writing to [...]

“Plagiarism is the academic and literary equivalent of robbery, taking somebody else’s property. If you copy somebody’s test answers, take an essay from a magazine and pass it off as your own, lift a well-phrased sentence or two and include them without crediting the author or using quotation marks, or even pass off [...]

Jerry Seinfled went on the attack to defend his wife’s book, Deceptively Delicious, and called author and chef Missy Lapine “another kind of nut” and implied that she was a “wacko and celebrity stalker”. His fervent defense of his wife might cost him a few dollars. The suit alleges Jessica Seinfeld copied Missy [...]

The Smart Bitches have uncovered a strange and sad set of circumstances involving the writing of romance novelist Cassie Edwards. Apparently passages from
Shadow Bear, her latest Signet release, are exactly the same as text in Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear and an article about black-footed ferrets from Defenders of [...]

There was that story running around the interwebs a while back that some guy had mashed up a bunch of Jane Austen stories and submitted them to publishing houses and agents to see if Jane Austen could still get published today. The big story was that the publishing folks were rejecting it because Jane [...]