Plagiarism.

This morning I signed in to Goodreads and saw a status update by one of the reviewers about her reviews being bluntly plagiarised by a fellow Goodreads user. Surely, she named the user and her blog address. I’m sure there’s a lot of traffic to that blog site now. I think the issue is now resolved as the culprit deleted most of her blog into nothingness.

Then I remembered that this happened to me as well. I reviewed a book at the beginning of the year for an author and he got back in touch telling me that my review has been used on one of the book blog tours his book was taking part in. I took a look at her blog and there it was- 75% of my review, staring back at me! I got in touch with the lady by messaging her on Goodreads and asked to be given credit where it was due. She deleted my review off her blog without replying an apology or eff all! FYI- if you’re into romance, erotica and YA then get in touch to get the blog address to go and check if any of your reviews have been regurgitated!

One thing I can’t understand- do they not realise that the authors whose books are being reviewed actually do take a look at the feedback they receive and two similar reviews stand out like a sore thumb? Thank god for people who notice those things and flag it with the original reviewer!

Another thing I can’t understand is- why would you read a book if you have stated clearly the genres you normally read and then pick up this totally out of the box book? Then without being able to say black nor white about it, they go and copy/paste someone else’s review?

And it raises a question- did they actually read the book at all? Surely if they did, or did not finish it, then there you go- there’s already some kind of an opinion to write about?

Sadly, the WWW is so infinite that it will be difficult to see if your reviews are being re-used/abused/recycled. It would take an army of minions to keep track of all book blogs and Goodreads reviewers to protect your work. Cause it is work. Reading takes time, trying to write a decent review takes time ( I normally just gush out all my feelings into a post and avoid over-analyzing). I guess there’s nothing else to do than trust people’s decency on not to steal your ideas and mark them as their own?