You state that copying from public domain sources isn’t illegal. However it is still in violation of publishing contract.

All that aside, some of Edwards’s sources are indeed under copyright, including the novel LAUGHING BOY and the article from Defenders of Wildlife magazine.

As a romance author, I disagree with your implication that because it’s just genre fiction it doesn’t matter so much. Also, most romance novelists are professional enough to read their contracts and take them seriously.

As for staying quiet about this, I think it’s the wrong thing to do. Just yesterday, The Writer’s Almanac published a blurb about Anne Bronte, and in that blurb sat the following quote, which I immediately linked to this issue. Here’s the quote:

“Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers? O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts—this whispering “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.”

Silence over wrongdoing creates a breeding ground for more of the same. I believe in voice.

I’ll give Edwards the benefit of the doubt. My best guess is that Edwards really *didn’t* think she was doing anything wrong — I know lots of authors in this particular area of romance novels who write super-fast, use a lot of obscure research sources, and who are ignorant of copyright law (as are many writers, as evidenced by the ignorant bloviating I’ve seen all over the Internet in the past week.)

While I don’t condone unprofessional, sloppy writing, I also don’t condone launching serious (and legally damaging) charges against an author when the charges appear to be, at least in part, inaccurate.

Throw the authors’ books in the trash. Judge her use of research sources as crappy writing of the highest degree. Fine. But labeling it “plagiarism” as a condemning legal judgement is WRONG if indeed most or all of the authors’ sources are public domain works or fall under Fair Use definitions. If you copy from works in the public domain you can do anything you want with them (I don’t sanction that, but it’s not illegal.)

I was appalled to see what the Smart Bitches bloggers did to Edwards without regard for due process or context re: accurate descriptions of copyright infringement, and also appalled to see Nora Roberts issue an unproven legal opinion that was IMHO an abuse of her influence as a bigtime author. On the bestseller food chain, Roberts is a great white shark. Edwards is a minnow.

All I’m saying is: don’t assume Edwards is some greedy villain.

The bloggers who launched this attack on her were already known for skewering Edwards’ novels. They had a well-known dislike for her work. I hear they have a book of their own coming out, so I wonder at the timing of this attack for possible publicity purposes.

Also, just for the record, quite a few prominent romance authors and also reviewers are quietly troubled by the way in which these bloggers and Nora Roberts went public with their accusations before a serious and thorough study of Edwards’ books was conducted by copyright experts. No author wants to be tried and convicted without a fair hearing.

Yes, that’s a frustrating aspect. She did her research, but she misused the source materials.

If you are writing non-fiction and want to use an excerpt from another work, you put quotes around it, identify the author and list the source in your bibliography. That’s fair use.

But if I copied segments of Pride & Prejudice into my romance novel, it would emphatically NOT be OK to just credit Jane Austen at the end.

Agreed, for the most part. But there are instances in historical fiction when using someone else’s words verbatim is accepted. E.g. using an historical soldier’s journal for a fictional journal entry, or using a real newspaper headline from the period in question. If the use is acknowledged, it’s lauded as realistic detail. It doesn’t even need quotes or a footnote right at the point of use to get a pass–just acknowledgment of the source.

All that said… if I wrote historical fiction, I would cover myself by acknowledging everything I possibly could.

When there’s a mess of this magnitude, one can at least hope that the parties concerned (author, editor, publisher) will learn something from it.

If any of her sources are still under copyright (and apparently more are being uncovered now) then appropriate settlements should also occur.

If I were in her situation, I would also consider a donation to some appropriate charity (perhaps something Native American) as a gesture toward offsetting what she took from public domain sources.

Precedent. That’s it, exactly. I don’t think Edwards should be strung up or anything, don’t get me wrong, but I think Signet has to:
1) agree that what happened was wrong
2) suggest some way to help ensure it doesn’t happen again, through education of their authors perhaps, if they claim ignorance on this matter
3) ask Edwards to apologize to her readership and to those authors whose works she pillaged without so much as a nod

No. If you copy passages of another work with minimal changes and make it look like your own work, crediting your source at the end just identifies the source you plagiarized.

I think the confusion here comes with the split between fiction and non-fiction.

If you are writing non-fiction and want to use an excerpt from another work, you put quotes around it, identify the author and list the source in your bibliography. That’s fair use.

If in a novel you use a short quote at the beginning of a chapter to establish the theme, you identify the author and source. That’s OK, too.
In one story I had a character quoting a bit of a poem by Wordsworth. In the text it was clear that he was quoting Wordsworth. That’s OK, too.

But if I copied segments of Pride & Prejudice into my romance novel, it would emphatically NOT be OK to just credit Jane Austen at the end.

This case is really the same thing, only with a non-fiction source. Copying is not research. They teach that in elementary school.

I do have some sympathy for Cassie Edwards’s plight. What she did was probably a shortcut to meet deadlines and I can imagine she’s suffering now. However, what she did was wrong and there should be reasonable consequences. Otherwise a bad precedent is set.

I disagree, she SHOULD be pilloried. She stole someone elses’ work and passed it off as her own. And she doesn’t seem to care about the fact she’s been caught. Think about how you’d feel if you found out she’d been swiping YOUR hard won words?

It isn’t hard to update your site with a list of sources and it doesn’t take long either.

With this author, neither a book list nor footnotes would work because she has ‘borrowed’ other authors’ work and simply changed sentences around a little. The result is almost, but not quite, verbatim quoting. The pity of it is that the ethnographic material she’s used is full of potential for effective storytelling. Edwards should read Ray’s recent post on WU about using setting to enhance character.

As a soon-to-be Penguin author (with Roc, not Signet) I’m very uncomfortable with the publisher’s response to the Edwards debacle. However, I do have complete faith in my editor at Roc and everyone else there whom I have dealt with.

Don’t forget that Ms Edwards is a fellow writer of ours. She must be feeling pretty bad right now. She should not be publicly pilloried, just given some good advice by her editor, so she’ll adopt a different approach in her next book. She evidently has a keen readership, and I’m sure she can continue to entertain them without falling into the same habit again.

The thing is that most authors glean facts from references and then weave those things into their stories using THEIR OWN WORDS.

In this case anyone who is interested should visit the Smart Bitches site and read the text comparisons. Entire passages are almost verbatim.

Listing references at the end doesn’t fix it, IMHO, as there’s no way to identify which passages are original or not. Footnotes in dialogue? A bit distracting, I’d say.

Copying source material isn’t just unethical, it’s also poor writing because borrowed portion can’t help but be different in style. In this case that’s what tipped off the person who discovered the similarities between CE’s work and the other works.

did receive an alert from RWA National saying that Edwards hasn’t been a member for at least 4 years although she is a member of their honor roll. but they will wait until the facts are firm before taking any action.

Many authors do this already because they are uncomfortable with using someone else’s intellectual property without giving them proper credit.