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 newcomers, here are the details.
January 7, 2008: While a friend (Kate) of blogger Candy at Smart Bitches Trashy Books read Shadow Bear by Cassie Edwards, said friend noticed “didactic passages in the book. They were written in a distinctly different voice, and out of idle curiosity, she decided to Google certain phrases and sentences.” The googling revealed that Edwards used paragraphs of works from other authors in her fiction without attribution including Paul Tolme who wrote an article about ferrets in Defenders Wildlife magazine. In all, readers would review 22 books and help compile a PDF document of examples of copying 98 pages long. (as an aside, I think Paul Tolme is one of Edwards’ favorite resources).
January 9, 2008: Signet doesn’t respond very well to a query I made suggesting that whatever Edwards did was both legal …
Loading ...
Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.”
