(Updated 22 May 2022; Originally blogged 23 January 2013)
Few things make me angrier than cheating. And in today's writing game there are two main ways to cheat. I've already written more than you probably want to read (or for that matter have read!) about fake reviews and sock puppet "fans."
And I've written about potential/apparent copyright infringement, complete with the evidence.
As I wrote on my (now vanished with the demise of Booklikes) review of Sylvie F. Sommerfield's Fires of Surrender, this is one of the more blatant cases of copyright infringement I've ever come across. How Ms. Sommerfield thought she could get away with it, I will never know. Perhaps the tale of having an "assistant" who did the copying from Jan Westcott's The Hepburn was true; we may never know.
Here's what I wrote in that 2013 review:
After the 1990 RWA National Conference in San Francisco, I was riding to the airport in a taxi with fellow authors Connie Flynn and Patricia Potter. Ms. Potter mentioned that there had been some gossip going around the final hours of the conference regarding an accusation of plagiarism leveled at popular Zebra Books author Sylvie Sommerfield. Her latest book, Ms. Potter said, was rumored to contain verbatim passages from something called The Hepburn. I literally gasped and said, "Oh my God, The Hepburn by Jan Westcott is one of my favorite books of all time!"
Upon arriving at my destination, I headed for the nearest newsstand and found a copy of Fires of Surrender for sale. Long before I'd reached the baggage claim area, I found passages -- they begin on page 15 -- that echoed with painful familiarity. Once home, I retrieved my copy of The Hepburn and began making notes. The next morning I called Romantic Times magazine and gave them the details over the phone, then mailed photocopies of numerous pages for comparison. And by numerous, I mean 20+ from various sections throughout the books.
Eventually Ms. Sommerfield made a variety of confessions, including that under deadline pressure and personal issues, she had hired an assistant who did the actual copying. I'm not sure now, 20+ years later [and now 30+ years later!], whether there really was an assistant or if Sommerfield, who has now gone to her ultimate reward, did the work herself and created a ghost of a ghost.
It was not merely that text passages were copied; the main plot was lifted virtually in toto.
Supposedly, some kind of financial agreement was reached between Zebra/Kensington and Ms. Westcott, who outlived her infringer by more than a decade, but as far as I know, no details were made public.
I have copies of both books within arm's reach as I write this. If anyone wants to challenge this, I can scan and post representative pages.
But for anyone who wants to see the evidence, I present it here. I have copies of both books within five or six feet of where I sit at my desk.
I've highlighted some of the pertinent passages in the Sommerfield book; I tend to resist marking even duplicate copies of books I love.
From The Hepburn, by Jan Westcott, (c) 1950, Crown Publishers
My goodness! How many other authors have you stumbled on, who have done the same?
ReplyDeleteAt some point in time, I beg you to take a peek at Catherine Emm's Forbidden Magic and compare it to The Wolf and the Dove by KEW. Keep in mind, I read Forbidden Magic as a young girl and I still have the book, so I've definitely read it a few times in my life, but I would almost lay money down that Catherine Emm, which is a pseudonym for Kay McMahon, ripped that story off. They are so eerily similar in dialogue and situation, it baffles me. Even so, I loved Catherine Emm's version, although I cannot help but feel it was plagiarized somewhat? Also, that was the only book she had written under that pseudonym, too. She released one under CE and her original pen name, in the same year. Afterwards, she merely kept writing under McMahon. I would link scans and whatnot, but I'm afraid I'd not be as efficient at pointing it all out as you obviously are.
I've tried getting a few girls to compare the two, to tell me I'm not crazy, but so far, none have!