Is plagiarism by an author an unforgivable crime? Would you ever buy a book from an author proved to be a plagiarist? Why or why not?

Yes. It breaks the trust that the reader has with that author. I trust that when I buy a book by someone that that someone is the one who wrote it. Not cut n pasted from another source.

Nope. See the trust issue.

I agree with you. I think it's terrible:(

I would not buy a plagiarist's book. I do think they should lose the ability to publish and have to pay back their advances. As a fledgling novelist(if it EVER gets done)I work hard for my words. I think and type for hours as I am sure all authors do. Stealing someones elses work is nasty and unforgivable. Do your own damn work don't steal someone elses..ok rant off...sorry..I am er a pit passionate on the subject I guess.
synde

I wouldn't buy books by such an author. It's like buying stolen property. It's a yucky situation all around.

plagarism is an unforgiveable crime. it's like stealing someone else's child and claiming it as her own. it's kidnapping intellectual property.

passionate about this a bit but you know how it is.... words! my words! :::growls::: because it's a picture that was painted. no stealing. bad.

I wouldn't be buying a book by a plagiarist. We all work hard for our words, we sweat and cry and bleed over our words and if some one stole words from any one of us it would feel like they'd stolen a child we'd given birth to.

I'm curious about your opinions: Is plagiarism by an author an unforgivable crime? Would you ever buy a book from an author proved to be a plagiarist? Why or why not?

I would say that, yes, it is unforgivable, especially when someone copies entire passages. If you see a snippet in someone else's book that you think is incredibly clever or insightful, it's easy enough to contact that person and request permission to use that line - and to credit it. But if you have to lift entire passages nearly verbatim in order to make your novel work, what the hell sort of wordsmith are you? A person doesn't have any grasp of their craft if they need to steal from others to impress readers, and I'll be damned if I'll support such a shoddy author by buying his/her books.

Yes, unforgivable.

No, never.

If you can't write a saleable work on your own, you have no business being an author. It just cheapens it for the rest of us.

I tend to agree...it's unforgivable that an author would steal someone else's words. I can't understand how, as an author, she could use someone else's hard work and try to pass it off as her own. She knows how hard it can be to produce a successful novel.

If I found out an author I read plagiarize any part of a novel, I wouldn't buy any of her work. If she did it on one, how do I know she hasn't done it with another one. Knowing something is plagiarized kind of cheapens it for me.

Is plagiarism by an author an unforgivable crime?

In a word... yes.

Would you ever buy a book from an author proved to be a plagiarist?

In a word... no.

Plagiarism is one of the lowest things a writer can do. Plagiarists are scum of the earth. To steal somebody else's work, their labor, their heart and soul is just unforgivable. They are stealing somebody else's blood, sweat and tears and that is just wrong on so many levels. If you can't make it on your own merits, using your own words, by pouring your own heart and soul out on a page, you don't deserve to make it. Stealing somebody else's is just unacceptable. I personally hope that if the allegations are true, that her career is forever damaged beyond all repair. If it's true, she's scum.

Is plagiarism by an author an unforgivable crime? Would you ever buy a book from an author proved to be a plagiarist? Why or why not?

I read through the Cassie Edwards thing and it reminded me a great deal of a plagiarism accusation leveled at Ian McEwan last year. Basically he was alleged to have plagiarised parts of another author's memoir for those sections in Atonement that focused on WWII hospitals and nurse's duties. The difference there was that he had actually cited the woman's work as having been used as part of his research (whereas I believe Cassie Edwards is saying that this was never required of her for her work). However, they both related to the extent to which non-fiction work could be incorporated into a work of fiction and whether it crossed the plagiarism line.

I think that if you have a situation where an author has taken a chunk of text from another author's work of fiction (see the Opal Metha plagiarism case from last year), then that is absolutely unacceptable and it would certainly mean that I would never buy a book written by the offending author.

If an author has taken a chunk of text from a work of non-fiction however, I think the line is a finer one. I would certainly want to see an acknowledgement from the author of which texts had been used as part of their research in the first instance if those texts had exerted a significant influence over the shape of the work (just as McEwan did in Atonement). However, I think there comes a point when the expression used in a non-fiction work is merely a repetition of facts and if there's nothing particularly distinctive about that expression, then I don't see how you can claim plagiarism because you're trying to make the same claim that the Da Vinci Code plaintiffs brought against Dan Brown (i.e. that you "own" certain facts or theories).

In the Cassie Edwards situation, I think the original work had a sufficiently distinctive expression for it to constitute plagiarism. But I'm not sure that this would hold true in other cases.

Does that make sense?

Nothing is unforgivable. I'm sad for Cassie Edwards, whose career is probably about to crumble in disgrace, and I pray that I never find myself in the position where I can't cope with my personal pressures to the extent that I would feel I had to steal someone else's work. The victims can recover damages through courts of law. Cassie Edwards has probably damaged herself for worse than she has damaged them.

I wouldn't buy a book from a plagiarist, the words are not their own. I wouldn't be interested in seeing what they thought was good enough to steal.

Coherence is low due to drugs, but in a nutshell, I think plagiarism is the unforgiveable sin for writers.

I am also a professor and have strong feelings about it in that venue as well.

Sometimes I am just plain ole disgusted by what people will do for recognition.

Catherine

Good question. I think if the author admitted they were wrong, apologized, made amends to whomever they copied from (if possible), and promised never ever to do it again, then yes I might give them another chance.

-Shanna