A few weeks ago, I got an email from a marketing company that offered to write my blog posts for me. They would, they said, write interesting and appealing blog posts (not just blurb+info), purporting to be by me, aimed at social media shareability to enhance my author brand, thus freeing up my limited time for messing about on the internet and making tea. (They said ‘writing’, but I think we all know what they meant.)
There are even people who will take over my Twitter feed, pretending to be me. Suck all the pleasure out of my life, why don’t you.
Here’s the thing: my ‘brand’ isn’t a magpie attached to stuff. My brand, as a writer, is me. My thoughts, my ideas, my characters acting within my plots, my politics and convictions and morals and swearing problem, and all of it expressed in my words. That’s what I am as an author. I am my words. And maybe some ingenious college kid in Milwaukee can guess what I might say and express it in my sort of words, just like maybe someone can write fanfic of my characters and hit my authorial voice; and maybe a lot of readers don’t even care, because they’re here for the words and not bothered who wrote them.
But all I can control, all I can offer you as KJ Charles, is the stuff out of my head, as mediated by my frankly poor typing. You may like my words, you may not, but they’re all I’ve got.
And this, I think, is why plagiarism, such as Lynn Hagen’s recent theft from online author Raythe Reign, is such a repellent thing to anyone who understands and cares about words.
Not everyone gets it, I know. I’ve seen comments on the Hagen business with a few people saying, “What does it matter?” Is plagiarism really that bad? Is there a victim really? Isn’t it just authors being precious snowflakes, fretting about their words, like anyone owns the English language?
Well, yes, it is that bad. Because, as authors, we are our words. Raythe Reign’s work, her words, her authorial existence have been violated, at the same time as Lynn Hagen’s readers have been ripped off by a copy-paste job presented as original work.
An author is not a shell company for other people’s words. If I pay someone else to write my blog posts, and lift my sex scenes from an online serial, and get my (non-existent) PA to run my Twitter feed pretending to be me, then what the hell am I for, and why are you reading stuff under my name?
As an author, I am my words. If they aren’t even my words, I’m nothing.
So if you steal my words and present them as your own, you’re not just saving yourself some time, and you’re not even ‘just’ stealing my intellectual property. You’re claiming something that’s fundamentally me to be you. It’s not just a borrow, it’s a deep-level lie, told directly to your readers. And you shouldn’t be surprised when that goes down very badly indeed.
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KJ Charles is a Rainbow Award-winning romance writer and freelance editor. She blogs about writing and publishing, spends too much time on Twitter, and has a Facebook group for book chat and sneak peeks. The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, a Victorian occult m/m romance, is out now from Samhain.
A story too secret, too terrifying—and too shockingly intimate—for Victorian eyes.
A note to the Editor
Dear Henry,
I have been Simon Feximal’s companion, assistant and chronicler for twenty years now, and during that time my Casebooks of Feximal the Ghost-Hunter have spread the reputation of this most accomplished of ghost-hunters far and wide.
You have asked me often for the tale of our first meeting, and how my association with Feximal came about. I have always declined, because it is a story too private to be truthfully recounted, and a memory too precious to be falsified. But none knows better than I that stories must be told.
So here is it, Henry, a full and accurate account of how I met Simon Feximal, which I shall leave with my solicitor to pass to you after my death.
I dare say it may not be quite what you expect.
Robert Caldwell
September 1914
If you’re not a writer, then you may just shrug, but writers stealing from writers? that’s like the most horrible incest you can imagine committing… It turns a writer’s stomach to even think of it.
Thanks for blogging about this. I’m shocked about the Lynn Hagen case, hadn’t heard anything about it but she’s a pretty well-known author, I think, in her genre. That just makes it worse.
This is so hard to understand. No author wants to have their work stolen. And as a reader, now what do we do? I have always loved Lynn’s work. There are series that I want to finish. And not all of it can be plagiarized. And how much blame does Siren take in all of this. Their exclusive writers seem to crank out a book or two every month. That seems to be a lot of pressure for any author to take.
IMO the author is responsible for agreeing doable deadlines and negotiating delays if problems occur. That depends on having a professional publisher relationship of course. I have never worked with Siren, can’t comment, but I would expect if you were in that much trouble a publisher would push the schedule, and it would be a pretty sorry state of affairs if they refused.
The publisher also ought to come down hard on this. When it happened to me as editor we sacked the author and set all books as not for reprint.
Which sounds amazingly harsh, now I read it. But the publisher relies on the author’s word, there’s no way to verify it’s original work. Plagiarism is breach of trust and breach of contract, so the publisher has to make some fairly firm decisions on that.
Perfect, and on point, as always!
Good article! I agree with everything you’ve said here. I’ve had the same offer to have someone write my blog posts but that’s where I connect with my fans. What fun would it be to give that over to someone else?
Ditto. I like blogging. And if you hate it you can pin or Tumblr or do that sepia photo app thing. No need to fake it!
I’ve heard about Lynn Hagen and it just saddens me to see this happen among authors, it’s bad enough any Joe or Sally does it but to have it happen by another author…it’s just horrendous.
Great post. An author’s brand is their words and if you don’t use your own words to advertise yourself and the appeal of your character than why even bother.
[…] Plagues and Plagiarism K.J. Charles about why being plagiarized is so horrible to an author. […]
What you said! Bang on.