Acts and accusations of plagiarism are as old as time, but the latest high-profile plagiarism case is unique to the era of digital publishing and indie authorship
| Allegations of widespread plagiarism by Cristiane Serruya first came to light when a reader notified romance novelist Courtney Milan of passages lifted from Milan’s book. On Feb. 18, Milan posted at her blog: Cristiane Serruya is a copyright infringer, a plagiarist, and an idiot. In that post, Milan points to multiple instances of suspected plagiarism. Milan believed from the start she wasn’t the only author to have her work stolen by Serruya, and word quickly spread in the romance community. Sure enough, more than thirty authors eventually came forward to say they were affected. The case has been dubbed #CopyPasteCris and covered by major media outlets such as The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and more.In response, the offending work has been taken down from sale. Based in Brazil, Serruya said she was ignorant of the theft and blamed the ghostwriter she hired off Fiverr. That excuse generated plenty of derision on its own, and it has since come to light that Serruya may have had a direct hand in the plagiarism. As of today, Serruya’s website is down, and she hasn’t tweeted since Feb. 19. Romance bestseller Nora Roberts wrote about the issue at her blog. She herself has been a victim of plagiarism by another high-profile author, and recounts the painful story in a post titled Plagiarism, Then and Now. Toward the end, she characterizes, very sharply, the current state of affairs in romance publishing—a genre that has been most transformed by the era of digital self-publishing, Kindle Unlimited, and Amazon algorithms. Roberts writes: |
| This culture, this ugly underbelly of legitimate self-publishing, is all about content. More, more, more, fast, fast, fast. Because that’s how it pays. Amazon’s—imo—deeply flawed system incentivizes the fast and more. It doesn’t have to be good, doesn’t have to be yours—as I’m learning hiring ghosts is not really rare. Those who live and work in this underbelly don’t care about the work, the creativity, the talent and effort and time it takes to craft a story. Just the money, and what they must see as bragging rights. I’m a published writer, they claim—even if they didn’t write a damn word. … The culture that fosters this ugly behavior has to be pulled out into the light and burned to cinders. Then we’re going to salt the freaking earth. |
| While the call to arms is admirable—and we hope it does make existing and future plagiarists think twice before publishing—we doubt if it can, by itself, resolve the root issue: the incentives that Amazon offers to make this activity worth the risk in the first place. Such incentives make it harder for authors who play by the “old” set of rules—writing and publishing at your own pace or at one you can sustain. Author Kilby Blades elaborates on this at her blog, saying: |
| The real losers are authors who aren’t cheating the system but who are being edged out by those who are—authors who may deserve to make the big lists, but can’t. There are larger ecosystem implications: major publishers are losing ground to Amazon sensations that seem to come out of nowhere, and romance imprints are closing left and right. The question is: how many out-of-nowhere “authors” are even real? |
| Such problems aren’t news to those inside the industry—or even casual observers. Just last summer, Sarah Jeong at The Verge wrote an exposé on how romance authors in particular game the Amazon algorithm, with a focus on book stuffing. While Amazon has responded to the stuffing problem by suspending the accounts of the most notorious offenders, it can’t possibly penalize authors for using ghostwriters (it’s an accepted practice across the industry) or for releasing too many titles (some writers can feasibly write and release multiple quality titles per year). So what is there to do? Indie author David Gaughran mentions a few steps on Twitter. We’d boil it down to the following: Amazon should (1) quickly identify and address plagiarism or fraud; (2) better police the All-Stars on Kindle Unlimited, who receive significant financial bonuses and might be tempted to abuse the system; and (3) further modify the payment model in Kindle Unlimited, since the institution of per-page payments is when things started to go off the rails. Bottom line: Reasonable and experienced people in the publishing community will advise, as Kristine Rusch does, to write your own books at your own pace and stop flooding the market with poor or mediocre material, as it hurts everyone in the long run. But we don’t see putting this horse back in the barn, especially not when some perpetrators are not writers at all, but marketers looking to manipulate the system and earn money as quickly as possible. We may ultimately be reliant on Amazon and other retailers to create payment models and environments that are less likely to reward low-quality and infringing work. But if Amazon and others financially benefit from its existence, don’t expect change any time soon. This is a case where quality does not always win (if it ever did). |
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
