Fire Star Press: Plagiarism: Alive and Well

Several months ago I introduced you the world of #cockygate and the book stuffing so prevalent on Amazon. If you missed those posts you can read them HERE and HERE.

Now, the world of romance has been hit by yet another scandal, this one involving plagiarism. It all began when a reader notified romance author Courtney Milan that another author, Cristiane Serruya, had copied portions of one of Courtney's books. Like the lawyer she is, Courtney did her own investigation and quickly determined that Cristiane had copied, word for word, multiple passages from her book The Duchess War. Not one to take plagiarism lightly, Courtney immediately went on the defensive and called Cristiane out in a blog post. (Read it HERE.)

Plagiarizing one author is bad enough but it was quickly determined that Ms. Serruya had plagiarized many others as well. It seems she copied and pasted other's words together, then hired ghostwriters to turn them into actual books, stiffed the ghostwriters for their services, and then published the "books" on Amazon where she became an Amazon bestselling author. She even gained USA Today Bestselling author status as a part of the Billionaire Ever After anthology--and it has been determined that her entry in that anthology was also plagiarized. It seems that even though she calls her self an author Ms. Serruya has quite possibly never actually written a book.

As most scammers do, when called out by Courtney and others authors such as Tessa Dare, Ms. Serruya denied any knowledge of it, then blamed it on her ghostwriters. As the number of authors and books plagiarized continued to grow, Ms. Serruya eventually deleted all of her social media accounts. One of the most baffling aspects to this whole scenario is that Ms. Serruya claims to be a lawyer. If anyone, anyone, is going to avoid plagiarism it should be a lawyer. And then to plagiarize authors you follow on social media? Beyond the pale.

@CaffeinatedFae on Twitter is keeping a running count of the authors/books impacted. As of this writing, the number of books, authors, etc. plagiarized by Ms. Serruya stands at:

42 books
29 authors
3 articles
1 website
1 Wattpad story

Among the other authors plagiarized in Nora Roberts. Yes, that Nora Roberts. This, unfortunately, isn't Nora's first time at the plagiarism rodeo and she is pissed. Nora has written two blog posts that have had me jumping to my feet and cheering. You can read them HERE and HERE and I highly recommend you do so. My absolute favorite quote from her posts is "I’ll have a lot more to say about this, all of this. I’m not nearly done. Because 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." Yes! The sleeping dragon has been awakened and it's name is Nora Roberts.

If I'm honest, and I always strive to be, each time one of these disasters comes to light, it just breaks my heart. So many of us just want to write stories to make people laugh or forget about their problems for a while. It's hard enough to be seen in such a crowded genre but when you've also got to fight against the scammers actively working to game the system... *sigh* Many authors have already given up. I don't blame them. It's tempting at times to join them. But, for now, I'll keep plugging along. Maybe now someone has joined the battle with big enough guns to make a difference. So, if you need me I'll be over here donning my armor and sharpening my sword, getting ready to join Nora's army.

To keep up with the latest on this issue, follow the #copypastecris hashtag on Twitter.

Until next month, happy reading - and writing.

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