So this month there has been quite the shake up in the writing community, especially in the romance community. There was a best selling "author" who it turned out had been plagiarizing from several, like over 30, other authors not to mention from magazines and other material. This all came to light pretty quickly when a reader found out and contacted on of the real authors affected. Then more and more material was discovered to have been plagiarized. The offending party at first tried to deflect attention by saying she had hired ghost writers and that they were the guilty ones. That is a whole other topic that I will get to in a bit. After that "defense" didn't hold up, the offending "author" deleted all social media connected to them and disappeared. I have a strong feeling that they are not who they claimed to be in the first place and fear that they will just pop back up under a different alias and continue to steal until they are caught again.
Now I was not personally affected by this scandal, as in thus far none of my books have been plagiarized. Still this story shook my writing world. Why? Because I am someone who writes my own books. I publish with small publishers and yes I self publish a lot as well. I am struggling to be seen and read in the very populated market. I just want my work to get into the hands of readers, and yes I would love to make some best seller lists and you know make a decent living at my writing. That is a hard task period, but when you have people with no scruples out there stealing the work of others and hiring ghost writers so they can just put out book after book, well that is just disheartening to someone like me. I can't compete with people like that. I work a day job. I have health issues. I have a spouse, family, friends. I have other time obligations. Yet every word that I write is my own. Yet I don't see the success that someone who stole from others, not even close. Still I keep writing. Why? Because I love to write and I have a dream. I refuse to give up that dream despite others crushing it over and over. I do sometimes wonder if my hard work really matter though, in a world where the unscrupulous are rewarded does my integrity in my work matter? Yes, to me it does and hopefully to those who manage to find and read my work as well. Still this whole topic has made me very depressed in my writing this past month. I have managed to write more than I did in January though and I am slowly making gains. I guess that's all that I can do. If you want to learn more about the plagiarism just go to twitter and search the #copypastecris.
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AuthorAuthor, artist, jewelry maker and all around creative person. I write in many genres and have a lot of fun doing so. Please take a look around and enjoy! Archives
January 2022
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