Romance Blog Suggests Romance Writer’s Plagiarism; Signet Says It’s Fair Use
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 1/9/2008 1:20:00 PM
Veteran romance novelist Cassie Edwards is revered by her fans for her meticulous research when writing books. From Savage Torment to Savage Sunrise, her books (of which there are more than 100, published by Dorchester/Leisure Books, Signet, Harlequin and other houses) have detailed descriptions of Native American religion, weaponry, cuisine and other subjects. But this week, the romance review blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books called attention to some striking similarities and, in some cases, verbatim passages, between Edwards’s works and a number of nonfiction books about Native American history and customs. Signet, however, is standing by the author. A statement from a Signet spokesperson read, “Signet takes plagiarism seriously, and would act swiftly were there justification for such allegations against one of its authors. But in this case Ms. Edwards has done nothing wrong. The copyright fair-use doctrine permits reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing of another author’s words, especially for the purpose of creating something new and original.” A Dorchester rep declined to comment.
Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books co-authors Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan found the texts using Google Book Search, and have posted 32 side-by-side comparisons of excerpts from Edwards’s books and nonfiction works including Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear (Bison Books) and Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz (Bison Books), as well as an article from Defenders magazine, the quarterly publication of Defenders of Wildlife. Some of the texts go back as far as 1904 (The Mythology of the Wichita by George Amos Dorsey). Wendell said she and Tan have identified eight sources. In the Edwards books Wendell has examined, she found at least one instance per book of identical passages in other sources by Googling the suspect phrases, and in some books, she found multiple examples, using two or more sources.
Among the examples cited is this excerpt from Savage Longings, which Leisure Books (a Dorchester imprint) published in 1997: “The root digger was a slender, sharp-pointed implement which was used to thrust into the ground to pry out the roots. Each digger was made of ash, the point sharpened and hardened in the fire”; compared to “This work was done with the root-digger (his’ so), a slender, sharp-pointed implement to be thrust into the ground to pry out the roots. In modern times the root-digger has been of iron—any sort of an iron bar. In earlier days, however, these implements were of wood, usually ash, the point sharpened and hardened in the fire,” from The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life by George Bird Grinnell (Cooper Square Press).
Signet’s statement noted, “anyone may use facts, ideas and theories developed by another author, as well as any material in the public domain. Ms. Edwards’s researched historical novels are precisely the kinds of original, creative works that this copyright policy promotes. Although it may be common in academic circles to meticulously footnote every source and provide citations or bibliographies, even though not required by copyright law, such a practice is virtually unheard of for a popular novel aimed at the consumer market.”
