I hate to admit it, and its not a pretty or happy feeling, but yeah I’m kind pissed off about this whole plagiarism thing too.
Nora Roberts has been posting about this on her blog, which you can get to by clicking the link. I don’t want to repeat what she said because you can go read it but in a nutshell, those 99 cent or free books that are being downloaded are most likely plagiarized. There is a trend now where scammers are hiring ghost writers to write books quickly, and they are using the copy/paste feature to copy other author’s books. That way the “author” can pump out books one after another, which is what they do.
So how do you define plagiarism? Plagiarism.org explains it like this.
” In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.”
I think its much more than that. An Indy authors profit is usually 35% of the cost of each book. So if an author has a book special and sells that book for a dollar they earn 35 cents. Yep, 35 cents. Unfortunately this scam is not only hurting the authors that these ghost writers steal from, they are hurting all Indy authors. They are pushing out a book a month (usually more than half of the book is stolen) publishing it and then selling it for a dollar. The reason this works for them is because people can’t resist a bargain and a bargain on a book is well in my opinion, the best kind of bargain.
Besides the obvious wrongness of this. People aren’t buying well written books because they think they cost too much or because it takes too long to get the next book in the series. A book can not be written in a month, with any piece of art, no matter the medium, to create something meaningful, it takes time.
There’s the actual writing of the book, that is after you have done the research, the plotting, the character development and if it takes you less than that, someone is either very very good or very very lucky.
Once a rough draft is done then its revised until it is a really good story. Then revisions, this is where any inconsistencies, plot holes or any other issue the manuscript may have are fixed. This again usually takes a couple of months.
After those revisions are done, its off to the beta readers. The further look for inconsistencies, plot hole and so on and so forth. This step is important because after a while, authors can’t see the issues a book might have. We need those extra eyes.
Another go through to check grammar and its off to the editor. I use a professional editor and she’s amazing.
This and all the things that go with all of the above, like the cover design, and store blurb, the pitches, acknowledgements and dedication pages, must be done before the book should be published. And that takes way longer than a month.
This is why I chose to go traditional. I need an agent. I need someone who is going to look out for me and my books and make sure that the content I am sending them is 100% the best that it can be. If my career depended on me plagiarizing or scamming anyone, I would never write another book. It’s horrible thing to do. And I don’t know how these people live with themselves. Indy author’s make very little money from their book sales to begin with, usually it doesn’t cover the cost of the cover or editing. As an Indy Author, I write for the sheer love of writing. And of course to pay maybe one bill.
Plagiarism is just bad news. Its bad for everyone. It’s bad for writers because can’t put out a book a month nor are we willing too. So to the people who are doing this. You will get caught, because what you are doing is theft and fraud. It’s wrong and the truth will come out.
Below is my editor, Kim Huther’s ad. She’s amazing and you can get to her website by clicking on her name above. She does NOT edit this blog, no one does. So this is just my ramblings and unedited going ons.
Cheers Everyone!
And have a great week.
Alex
