Plagiarism WTFckery: Bloggers Who Steal

Plagiarism: Stealing someone else's published ideas or information and presenting them as your own, without giving proper credit.

Writing a book review is a very personal experience for me. Whether I give a book an A+ grade or an unfortunate F grade, I try and take the time and write the best opinion piece I can create. Sometimes it will take me only an hour, in some cases a few hours, where I will sit there, spending my free time to write a piece of work that in some cases has come deep down inside my soul and can be very draining. *cue dramatic music*

I think a majority of book reviewers feel the same way, and this means the book blogging end to the reviewing websites, and even those well known print publications that hire reviewers and pay them for their reviews

Can you even imagine a person, who says they are a book reviewer, but comes along and reaps what you sow, laying claim to your words that you sat there and penned for hours, so they can reap these awards and the accolades? (their goal most likely is to try and get free books from the publisher and/or author and perhaps gain in popularity and blurbed in a book)

It happens ore often than you can think and it's called blogger plagiarism. And now more than ever it is becoming a big problem. And over the past few weeks, this stealing of people's reviews has been brought up on many other blogs.

I once posted about this back in July, when a blog I visited found out that another blogger copied, or in other words plagiarized a blogger's post almost word for word. As I said then, and I say now:

"Get a clue! Bloggers are writers and every time some jackass blogger thinks it is okay to cope another’s words and call it their own and don’t recognize the source, it is plagiarizing, plain and simple. And to those blogger who plagiarize, don’t act like the victim and tell the one you have insulted that it isn’t a big deal, because it is! I have read about this issue on some blogs where they have had an experience where they their post has been plagiarized. They don’t always call out the blog by name that did it. Some don’t want to talk about it because it leads to drama. You better believe if some asshat blogger tried to plagiarize my words, I would come out with guns blazing. I will drag your name into the mud. One blogger has talked about her own situation with being plagiarized and even called out the blogger that did it. I applaud her for coming forth and posting about it."

A few young adult bloggers noticed some young adult bloggers were "violated", who were victims of having their reviews stolen by other bloggers and posted it on their blogs, where they claimed those words as their own. No names were mention, which if it were me I would have announced the thief and their blog names more times than you can count to "out" them, to show how low down, dirty and pathetic they are. What if publishers look forward to this lying blogger's reviews, where they send the lying blogger a ton of free books? What would a publisher do or say knowing a blogger they think writes great reviews they can use for blurbing purposes, is a plagiarizer? This may also have a ripple effect for book blogging as a whole. One person does something horrible, then the majority may suffer because of it.

But KB, what if these low, down stealing bloggers don’t understand what plagiarism is? They are too young! I'm calling BULLSHIT on that! If Melina, a ten year old blogger who runs Reading Vacation knows what plagiarism is, then a 15 year old… 23 year old… and even a person older than that better know full well about it also. Plagiarism is stealing, plain and simple. I can't even comprehend how someone can actually copy and past someone else's words, and not think there is anything wrong about it.

I was in utter and total shock to see that the review site, All About Romance (AAR) is the victim of plagiarism. And I have to hand it to them because they called the person out and named names. (Since I reviewed at AAR for almost a year, I went to check to see if any of my reviews there were pirated.)

It seems a 23 year old blogger called Queen of Romance, who runs the Ramblings on Romance Blog is this plagiarizer of a majority of AAR reviews. (Not to be confused with Kristi (J)'s Ramblings on Romance that has been around since 2005. When I saw the Queen of Romance had the title for her blog as the same as Kristi's, a sour taste filled my mouth, because with a simple Google search, Queen would have seen that Ramblings was already taken and could, SHOULD, have come up with a new title for her blog)

Lynn AAR has contacted this blogger after she noticed "The author of this blog is a plagiarist. She claims to read and review romance novels, but many of her “reviews” are actually excerpts from reviews here at AAR – copied without our permission and without attribution to the authors or the site. This plagiarism was brought to our attention by an author who saw these reviews on the blog and recognized them as reviews she had read at AAR. When she notified me of this last week, I checked the blog against our reviews and found that almost every review on that blog was ours."

A perfect example of Queen of Romance stealing an AAR review is Gone too Far by Suzanne Brockman. "Sandy Coleman originally reviewed this book in 2003. The blog put up what the owner passes off as her own review on March 8, 2010. As one can tell from the way that review appears, paragraphs 1-5 match paragraphs 3-7 of the AAR review word for word."

AAR's Gone too Far paragraphs 3-6:
Anxious to find out why his soon-to-be ex-wife Mary Lou hasn't signed the divorce papers sent to her weeks earlier, Lieutenant Sam Starrett is stunned to discover that, instead of a cagey Mary Lou dodging his calls and jerking his chain, her Sarasota home is a murder scene. Though the woman in the house has obviously been dead for weeks, Sam is convinced that the body is that of Mary Lou and not that of the sister who lived with her. But the question tormenting Sam is an even more terrifying one: Where is his young daughter Haley?

A call to the FBI soon brings Special Agent Alyssa Locke onto the scene. Her complex feelings for Sam aside, Alyssa is certain that Sam didn't kill his wife, but convincing others at the Bureau (including Max) is a challenge for even the uber-competent Alyssa. When the body does turn out to be Mary Lou's sister, Sam and Alyssa hit the trail to try and find his missing wife and daughter.

But matters are far more complicated than even Sam realizes. On the other side of the country, Team Sixteen CO Tom Paoletti, relieved of his command following a presidential assassination attempt in which he saved lives but disobeyed Secret Service orders (Into The Night), has been hauled in for questioning by some distinctly creepy government types. The reason for the interrogation? Weapons traced back to an earlier Team Sixteen operation have surfaced in the hands of the terrorist shooters.

So, with Tom facing possible charges on treason and Sam a suspect in a murder, Alyssa finds herself in an unenviable situation. Torn between her duty to the FBI and her certain knowledge that Sam's time is better spent finding Mary Lou (who may be connected to the terrorist attack) than facing days of interrogation, Alyssa makes a critical decision that could put both her career and her heart in danger.

Queen of Romance's Gone too Far paragraphs 2-5:
Anxious to find out why his soon-to-be ex-wife Mary Lou hasn't signed the divorce papers sent to her weeks earlier, Lieutenant Sam Starrett is stunned to discover that, instead of a cagey Mary Lou dodging his calls and jerking his chain, her Sarasota home is a murder scene. Though the woman in the house has obviously been dead for weeks, Sam is convinced that the body is that of Mary Lou and not that of the sister who lived with her. But the question tormenting Sam is an even more terrifying one: Where is his young daughter Haley?

A call to the FBI soon brings Special Agent Alyssa Locke onto the scene. Her complex feelings for Sam aside, Alyssa is certain that Sam didn't kill his wife, but convincing others at the Bureau (including Max) is a challenge for even the uber-competent Alyssa. When the body does turn out to be Mary Lou's sister, Sam and Alyssa hit the trail to try and find his missing wife and daughter.

But matters are far more complicated than even Sam realizes. On the other side of the country, Team Sixteen CO Tom Paoletti, relieved of his command following a presidential assassination attempt in which he saved lives but disobeyed Secret Service orders (Into The Night), has been hauled in for questioning by some distinctly creepy government types. The reason for the interrogation? Weapons traced back to an earlier Team Sixteen operation have surfaced in the hands of the terrorist shooters.

So, with Tom facing possible charges on treason and Sam a suspect in a murder, Alyssa finds herself in an unenviable situation. Torn between her duty to the FBI and her certain knowledge that Sam's time is better spent finding Mary Lou (who may be connected to the terrorist attack) than facing days of interrogation, Alyssa makes a critical decision that could put both her career and her heart in danger.

It seems to me that Queen maybe specifically targeting and posting older AAR's reviews and rearranging the words (not that well to hide her stealing, IMO) because AAR's backlist is so extensive. A person who reads Queen reviews may not put two and two together because these books were released more than 5 years ago. Even Queen's rating guideline's are the exact replica of AAR's!

For Shame Queen of Romance who runs the Ramblings on Romance blog at http://romanceramblings23 blogspot.com/

Serious, what is the point of having a review blog, if you don't write the reviews yourself? Can we say lazy, sad, pathetic and honestly, morally and ethically wrong.