Plagiarism and the consequences

Plagiarism is a heinous crime that ruins authors, ruins books, ruins reputations, and the writing and publishing communities in many different ways.

Often, plagiarism is blatant.

I have seen a well - known author plagiarize someone else's work, and when confronted by the owner of the book, the author simply attributed the work to an unnamed source.

Because the author has a HUGE platform, thousands of people take her words as fact.

(I can tell you that I have spoken with many authors, including many that actually write for books - based companies, and they tell me how shocked they were when they read excerpts from their books, and suddenly found out that the words they were so proud of weren't really their own.

Yes, sometimes the plagiarist even has an editor who edits him / her.)

Some authors admit to plagiarizing pieces of their work, and those authors are usually still treated with respect and have very successful careers.

The works I have seen that have been plagiarized are where the author has clearly copied the work, but has made changes so that it sounds very close to the original.

I've read some books that had pieces of my dialogue in them, and it was a bit uncomfortable when I'd read a passage, and suddenly I realized I was hearing someone else's voice.