Thursday 19 July 2007

Publishers Fail To Spot Blatant Plagiarism

"David Lassman, head of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, sent manuscripts to 18 editors seeking a publishing contract, using only slightly disguised versions of chapters from the iconic novelist's most famous works. But only one publisher spotted the fakes..."

Full article here.

And another viewpoint here.

3 comments:

KeVin K. said...

Ha.
Linked the article in my journal. Great stuff. (See? Those edtiors who rejected your mss really can't recognize great writing when they see it!)

CL Taylor said...

I thought this was an interesting debate but I'm not sure that, just because the publishers didn't write back and say "hey, this is plagiarism" they didn't spot it. Everything I've read suggests that publishers will send back form letters to everyone who's sent them something that doesn't excite them and I suspect they read the first line and though "Rip off merchant - standard rejection".

hesitant scribe said...

Fabulous! Also following the links through to end up at Grumpy Old Bookman is interesting. So what can we learn from this? That getting published takes a whole lotta luck - the right person seeing it at the right time. Does this mean we need to get ourselves an agent too?! How very depressing!