Dear Author has the story of DeborahAnne MacGillivray, a romance writer (and "secret co-publisher" and cover artist for Highland Press) who clearly doesn't think three-star Amazon reviews are good enough for her darling prose.
MacGillivray's attack on the reviewer who dared to not love her book is covered here, while more of the convoluted story of Highland Press is here. (I can't say I understand all of this, and some of it seems to be posturing on one side and hysteria on the other, but it's definitely weird, unprofessional behavior.)
She's off the reservation and running wild, folks -- and some of the passive-aggressive responses in comments are nearly as entertaining.
[via Diana Pharoah Francis]
Showing posts with label Scandals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scandals. Show all posts
Friday, April 11, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Plagiarism in Romance?
Second in our series about scandals in genre publishing; collect them all!
Galley Cat reported on a string of posts at Smart Bitches about a pile of romances by Cassie Edwards. Now, I haven't read every last bit of the supposedly plagiarized pieces, but they all seem to be factual descriptions of actual Indian rituals, behaviors, beliefs, and so on. And changing the wording substantially, when describing actual real-world things, would tend to make one's description diverge from that thing. The technical term for this is "getting it wrong."
Now, if a writer doesn't do any research, that's bad.
And if a writer does research, and gets things wrong anyway, that's even worse.
But if you do research, and get things right, that's bad, too. Apparently even a romance writer now should footnote her references.
Does anyone else think this is insane?
Edit, a week later: Well, it's now looking like Ms. Edwards has copied nearly everything but her own name in various books, so let me climb down from this increasingly shaky limb. I won't say Edwards is a plagiarist, but the weight of the evidence certainly points that way.
I do still wonder about my original point (though Edwards's case did not turn out to be like this) -- in historical fiction, or works that otherwise draw from specific reportage, how can a writer be both accurate to reality (as depicted in the original sources) and original? You'll recall that Ian McEwan got yelled at last year for using descriptions of medical procedures in Atonement that were "too close" to his (acknowledged) sources.
Copying another writer's invented dialogue or descriptions is clearly wrong, but what about closely following another writer's detailed description of something real? Particularly when dealing with technical language, there may not be any other clear, accurate way to phrase a sentence.
There are more and more of these plagiarism complaints lately, since it's trivial to compare electronic texts. Perhaps someday we'll see a vast database of all English-language text, and any book projected for publication will be required to be compared against the database, and only works with a sufficient percentage of purely new content will be allowed to continue. But what will that threshold be? What with cliched language, standard descriptions, the seven basic plots, and so on, I wonder if most novels would be as much as 5% original.
Galley Cat reported on a string of posts at Smart Bitches about a pile of romances by Cassie Edwards. Now, I haven't read every last bit of the supposedly plagiarized pieces, but they all seem to be factual descriptions of actual Indian rituals, behaviors, beliefs, and so on. And changing the wording substantially, when describing actual real-world things, would tend to make one's description diverge from that thing. The technical term for this is "getting it wrong."
Now, if a writer doesn't do any research, that's bad.
And if a writer does research, and gets things wrong anyway, that's even worse.
But if you do research, and get things right, that's bad, too. Apparently even a romance writer now should footnote her references.
Does anyone else think this is insane?
Edit, a week later: Well, it's now looking like Ms. Edwards has copied nearly everything but her own name in various books, so let me climb down from this increasingly shaky limb. I won't say Edwards is a plagiarist, but the weight of the evidence certainly points that way.
I do still wonder about my original point (though Edwards's case did not turn out to be like this) -- in historical fiction, or works that otherwise draw from specific reportage, how can a writer be both accurate to reality (as depicted in the original sources) and original? You'll recall that Ian McEwan got yelled at last year for using descriptions of medical procedures in Atonement that were "too close" to his (acknowledged) sources.
Copying another writer's invented dialogue or descriptions is clearly wrong, but what about closely following another writer's detailed description of something real? Particularly when dealing with technical language, there may not be any other clear, accurate way to phrase a sentence.
There are more and more of these plagiarism complaints lately, since it's trivial to compare electronic texts. Perhaps someday we'll see a vast database of all English-language text, and any book projected for publication will be required to be compared against the database, and only works with a sufficient percentage of purely new content will be allowed to continue. But what will that threshold be? What with cliched language, standard descriptions, the seven basic plots, and so on, I wonder if most novels would be as much as 5% original.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Drug Abuse in SF!
Better watch out, or I'll turn into the Drudge Report, but This Just In...
Jeff VanderMeer reports widespread drug abuse in the spec fic community!
Millions aghast!
Mothers cry!
Babies whimper!
Tongue firmly in cheek!
Jeff VanderMeer reports widespread drug abuse in the spec fic community!
Millions aghast!
Mothers cry!
Babies whimper!
Tongue firmly in cheek!
Nepotism in SF?
Carol Pinchefsky thinks so. (Or at least is willing to entertain the idea long enough to write an article on it.)
The money quote: "one editor of a major publication house gave his girlfriend, an author, a large advance and bragged to his colleagues about making his next house payment."
I'll also note that I have essentially assumed that a married man could not have a "girlfriend" as well -- an assumption belied by the actual history of the SF field, and I know that -- to simplify things. I also am concentrating on men, even though female editors could also have "girlfriends," simply because it seems ruder to pick on women in this way. (Is that sexist of me?)
I don't see any good candidates here. Closely reading the quote, "house" implies book publishing, which limits the list. "Colleagues" also implies that this person works in the company of other editors, also limiting the possibilities. (Knowing salacious gossip about who is sleeping with who would help, but I'm usually out of the loop about that. Anyone who wants to cure my ignorance is reminded my e-mail is acwheele at optonline dot net.)
Anyone want to make guesses? (If so, please be cognizant of the libel laws in your locality...)
The money quote: "one editor of a major publication house gave his girlfriend, an author, a large advance and bragged to his colleagues about making his next house payment."
Since Antick Musings is all about uncomfortable questions and making connections between things that should be left separate, we're going to tackle the important question -- who the heck is that mysterious editor?
Who could he be? According to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Editor Wiki, the current male SF/Fantasy editors are:
- Lou Anders, who is married
- Gardner Dozois -- has he bought anything from Susan Casper on the house-payment level? (I seriously doubt it.)
- Russell B. Farr of Ticonderoga Publications -- of whom I have no knowledge, but he's Australian, and the Australian SFF Cabal invited me to their wild party before World Fantasy, so I'll give him the element of the doubt.
- James Frenkel -- is he Joan Vinge's editor? That would be odd, but not unknown. (cf. the late James Rigney) On the other hand, they're married, so she's not his "girlfriend."
- David G. Hartwell -- is married
- John Klima -- is married, and I doubt he has that kind of budget to begin with
- Peter Lavery -- I know nothing about his home life
- James Minz -- is married
- Darren Nash -- another one I don't know
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden -- is married, to a fellow editor at the same house
- William Schaefer -- owns his company, so who would care?
- Stanley Schmidt -- is married
- Paul Stevens -- nah, don't think so
- Gordon Van Gelder -- is married
- Sean Wallace -- also married
- Jacob Weisman -- similarly married
- Sean Wright of Crowswing Books -- no idea, but I don't think he has a house-payment sized budget
I'll also note that I have essentially assumed that a married man could not have a "girlfriend" as well -- an assumption belied by the actual history of the SF field, and I know that -- to simplify things. I also am concentrating on men, even though female editors could also have "girlfriends," simply because it seems ruder to pick on women in this way. (Is that sexist of me?)
I don't see any good candidates here. Closely reading the quote, "house" implies book publishing, which limits the list. "Colleagues" also implies that this person works in the company of other editors, also limiting the possibilities. (Knowing salacious gossip about who is sleeping with who would help, but I'm usually out of the loop about that. Anyone who wants to cure my ignorance is reminded my e-mail is acwheele at optonline dot net.)
Anyone want to make guesses? (If so, please be cognizant of the libel laws in your locality...)
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