Signet Changes Stance on Cassie Edwards Plagiarism Allegations

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 1/14/2008 7:36:00 AM

There's a new twist in the Cassie Edwards plagiarism allegations story: Signet, which publishes many of the prolific romance writer’s books and had said on Wednesday that “Ms. Edwards has done nothing wrong,” issued another statement late Friday, saying its original comments were based on a review of a “limited selection of passages.” The publisher will examine all of Edwards’ books that it publishes, the statement said, and “based on the outcome of that review we will take action to handle the matter accordingly. We want to make it known that Signet takes any and all allegations of plagiarism very seriously.”

As PW reported last week, the romance review blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books found at least 32 striking similarities and, in some cases, verbatim passages, between Edwards’s works and a number of nonfiction books about Native American history and customs. Edwards has written more than 100 Native American-themed novels. Signet had originally said Edwards’s actions fell under the copyright fair-use doctrine.

Edwards has spoken up on the matter, via MySpace. Smart Bitches posted a message today in which Edwards supposedly wrote to one of her MySpace fans, “I have done nothing wrong. My publisher is standing behind me 100%, for they know my work better than anyone, and they know that all romance authors who use research for historicals have to use reference books to do this.” Edwards called the writers of Smart Bitches “spiteful women who have found a way to bring attention to themselves, by getting in the media in this horrible way.”

Smart Bitches also found passages in Edwards’s book Savage Dream (Dorchester, 1997) that closely resemble parts of Oliver La Farge’s 1929 Pulitzer-winning novel Laughing Boy, which is still under copyright. Until now, Edwards’s sources had mainly been nonfiction works in the public domain.