There was an unfortunate (and provable) case of plagiarism in the romance writing community (romancelandia) that started unfolding on Twitter the evening of February 18. While we don’t want to bring too much attention to who did what to whom, we do want to focus on what authors can learn from it.
- The most basic rule of content creation of any kind: never copy someone else’s work. Plagiarism can result in anything from a bad reputation for the plagiarist to the victims bringing lawsuits against the plagiarist. It’s easy to prove plagiarism with all the tools online that will verify it for free, so just create your own unique content, don’t copy others.
- Always check the work of others whose writing you are publishing for plagiarism. It’s always best to check for plagiarism if someone else has written something for you to publish. Don’t forget how far this spans: blog posts, articles, short stories for anthologies and journals, full-length works, etc. Even though it’s the writer’s fault if they plagiarize something, the onus always comes back to the person posting or publishing the plagiarized material, as we’ve seen with the #CopyPasteCris situation. Forewarning: an author might copy and paste research in particular into their work to include relevant research that they struggle to rephrase, but it must be rephrased and/or quoted and/or cited, etc.
- Credit others and ask for permission before posting another person’s content. This is a tricky one because we all like to quote from our favorite books and put them into pretty graphics. Where we get into trouble is quoting without citing the author and their book, or quoting large passages without permission, especially if it’s posted anywhere that could result in monetary gain for someone that isn’t the author (e.g. website, social media platform, published work). If you’re quoting a large portion of text from a book, check the copyright section of the book first. It may tell you to ask for permission from the author or publishing company before using significant portions of text, especially if you’re going to reprint it in a book (remember, monetary gain—even if the book is free, you could gain income in other ways). Even if the copyright page doesn’t mention that, you should still ask permission.
From the book CELL 2455 DEATH ROW by Caryl Chessman
If you want to learn more about plagiarism, how to avoid it, and what constitutes it, check out plagiarism.org.
If you’re a crime writer, a mystery novelist, or you just need to bump off a character without violence or bloodshed, using poison might be your cup of tea…or maybe in their cup of tea.
poisonous plant you’re interested in, and you’ll find out everything from where it’s grown to how it works.
just can’t hear what it wants to say.
Now, you might be scratching your head and thinking that “YA noir” of any type is an oxymoron. After all, isn’t noir centered around vice? And aren’t vices supposed to be kept out of the tender hands of young readers?
smoke like Bogart or tossing back a string of shots, contemporary characters can be more realistic to today’s teen or young adult behaviors. The key is to not make it gratuitous; don’t force vices on your characters, just do what makes sense for them, their age and their situations.
world that even in front of millions of people, it’s better to stop, start over and do it right rather than forge ahead with a mistake.
And that’s where many authors find themselves at a triple crossroads:
how time consuming and frustrating it can be searching online for the right fit, spending precious time clicking and clicking when you’d rather be writing and submitting.
die? Is there a chase that’s moving like lightning?
large man came into focus eerily through the door’s frosted glass pane. Frantically she looked for a way out, but there were no windows in the room. Suddenly the door frame cracked; the man was forcing his way in. Josie looked around wildly for a weapon – anything to defend herself. Her eyes landed on a baseball bat standing in the corner; it was better than nothing. Moving quickly but quietly toward the bat, she grabbed it just as the door gave way.
book, and that includes song lyrics – even just one line of a song. Someone wrote those words and published them, just like authors write and publish books, and they get royalties from them. I’m sure you wouldn’t “borrow” a page from a JK Rowling novel without expecting to get sued, right? Song lyrics are the same thing, only instead of an entire paragraph or page of someone else’s writing, you’re borrowing the equivalent (because songs are shorter) – a line or a stanza.
How do you know if a song is under copyright protection?
So we checked out several different online sources that offer premade book covers, and we’re going to highlight some things in their agreements that illustrate why you need to read each agreement carefully before you hit “accept”. (We’re not going to list the names of these websites or companies because agreement conditions can change at any time, and not all companies have all of the same conditions.) Again, it’s up to you to decide whether a company’s conditions are acceptable to you.