Chicklit Shitstorm

There is an interesting plagiarism case currently developing in Germany about plagiarism in the genre of self-publisher romance novels, also known as "ChickLit". A similar plagiarism discussion in the area of ChickLit arose in 2013 around the novels of Martina Gercke (I published commentary on this wild theory of the forgotten "placeholders" in German together with S. Schroder). It seems that the successful German romance and fantasy author Cathey Peel / Katja Piel has admitted to publishing two novels that she plagiarized, although she has now depublished that statement.

The first book, Alles begann mit dir, was published both in Kindle Direct Publishing and as a print-on-demand book just before Christmas). One of the readers noted anonymously on the review page at Amazon that the book sounded a lot like it was published as one of the Denise series of books. The Denise series comprised over 500 romance novels published bi-weekly in magazine format by the German Cora Verlag in the 80s and 90s.

Interestingly, there was nothing more than this vague, unsubstantiated claim that started a landslide. No specific source was given, no example other than to say that some aspects were inserted, such as the use of mobile phones.

Amazingly, Piel quickly removed the book from sale and deleted the page at Amazon. Piel posted an article on her Facebook marketing page (now deleted, but I have a copy) explaining that she had recently found the manuscript and thought she had written it many years ago, but it turns out that it was just an exercise in typing that she did when she got her first computer. She had just typed up a novel, that was all.

Well, the bullshit detectors started pinging—30 years ago people were using WordStar or Word 2.0 (doesn't that bring back painful memories?). And storing things on 5 1/4" floppies. Imagine recopying a typing exercise to all the new editors and formats and storage media! Comments started appearing below the Facebook entry, but most of them were of the "shit-happens-we-still-love-you" variety. It was a hard story to believe, but many fans did.

Some, however, began looking for a source. There are a number of potential novels that could be the basis for the book, but since the novel itself is no longer available, even if one could obtain a copy of the potential source, there is nothing to compare it to. And of course, these "romance novels" are all somehow the same with a girl falling in love, getting into trouble, and then there being a happy end.

Piel also quietly and quickly withdrew a second book, Das Amulett in mir. When fans discovered this and questioned her, she stated that it had not been selling well. Now the swarm began asking harder questions and commenting that copyright infringement is a crime. Some were looking at the rest of her books, speculating about potential sources. Piel deleted the Facebook entry, saying that the insults had gotten out of hand.

A few hours later she admitted in another Facebook posting that she had indeed plagiarized:

She offered to return the money earned to the publisher or the authors or to donate the money.  Now a shitstorm broke loose in earnest. Many authors were downright mad that Piel was bringing discredit down on self-publishers. Many readers felt cheated. A few loving fans tried to stand up for Piel, berating the critics for not having anything better to do with their lives than commenting negatively about the plagiarism. Some were pointing to copyright law and calling for the law to step in, although only the plagiarized author could actually bring suit. Other self-publishing authors were angry that Piel was making a living out of self-publishing, but had now admitted to having plagiarized (at least) two of her books. A few hours (and many comments) later, this posting, too, was deleted.  The self-publisher blogs indie publishing and Self-Publisher-Bibel have now weighed-in on the matter (in German). 

I find it interesting to compare this reaction to the reaction many people have about the work that VroniPlag Wiki does in documenting plagiarism in dissertations. One often hears the "anyone can make a mistake" melody when a documentation is first published, and fingers are pointed at the persons documenting the plagiarism, although the dissertations and the sources are all publicly available works. These "plagiarism hunters" are poking around in people's private lives, putting non-prominent people in the stocks, and should be making better use of their time. Until someone actually reads the documentations, it seems. Although they are publicly available on the web site, I often see that people have never actually studied what is found there, although they have a strong opinion about the case. Having a good look at the documentation makes it clear that this is a serious matter and not just a trifle.

It will be interesting to see if the sources do eventually show up. Although the Denise series is not available at the German National Library or the State Library, there are a number of women selling their collections online. Perhaps it will be possible to determine how extensively Piel's two books did plagiarize previously published material.

[Note: an earlier version of this post has been extensively rewritten] 

Disappearing Texts

An interesting question has arisen in connection with a plagiarism case in the ChickLit scene in Germany. But first a little ChickLit Plagiarism history (and a tip-of-the-hat to ebooks-autoren.de for the chronology):

In the United States in 2006 it was determined that the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan (a student at Harvard), was a plagiarism of Megan McCafferty's books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, among others. The publisher, Little, Brown and Company, recalled all the copies.

In Germany in 2010 the book Axolotl Roadkill by Helene Hegemann was published by Ullstein.  It was determined to be plagiarism of Strobo by a blogger called Airen. Ullstein purchased the rights to use the texts from Strobo and issued a second edition.

The British author Sophie Kinsella is a prolific writer of ChickLit. Her books have been translated into German and are very successful in Germany.

A new writer on the ChickLit scene, Martina Gercke, self-published a book Holunderküsschen (Elderberry Kisses) in November 2011 with the Kindle Direct Publishing Programm at Amazon. It was so successful (best-selling eBook for the first half year of 2012) that a publisher "edited" the book and printed it. However, reviews began popping up pointing out uncanny similarities with Kinsella's books.

In October 2012 Gercke's second book, Champagnerküsschen (Champagne Kisses) was published at Amazon as a Kindle. In November 2012 a commentator at Amazon gave some concrete details about a plagiarized passage in this second book that were taken from Ildiko von Kürthy's Höhenrausch (Flying High). A massive fight ensued between defenders of Gercke and people accusing her of plagiarism.  Gercke apologized in her blog for the "similarities" and promised to "fix" the passages and upload a new version of the book. Self-publishers can apparently change what they upload as often as they like, which makes it hard to discuss a particular version.

Kinsella's publisher, Random House, gets wind of the story as the site buchreport (book report) publishes a synopsis of many similarities between Kinsella's books and Gercke's first book. Gercke publishes an apology on her web site along with a video and notes that she has reached a settlement with Random House, and the book will no longer be sold. Unfortunately, both the apology and the video have been removed from her site. In the apology she noted that she was using portions from one of Kinsella's books as "placeholders", something that does not really make sense.  

Or rather, it doesn't make sense until the more copies from other Kinsella books are documented.  buchreport interviews Random House' legal counsel, who is livid about the additional plagiarisms.

Being interested in how much more of the books might be plagiarized, I tried to obtain copies in order to run them through some experimental software. The book Holunderküsschen was still on the shelves in the ChickLit asile of the MegaBookStore down the road. But Champagnerküsschen poses a problem: It only exists (apparently also in a number of different versions) on Kindles. Amazon won't sell me a copy. I wrote to a number of people at Amazon, most didn't answer (seems they are all busy fending off a TV report on how badly the company treats their seasonal workers for the Christmas rush). One did answer and suggested I contact the author. I don't suppose she will be happy to help me. 

I've been able to contact a few people who do have copies, but they are not permitted to lend or sell their copies. They are digitally locked with a DRM scheme to their own Kindle. They cannot be legally extracted. There are no copies on deposit in libraries.

This leads to my musings about disappearing texts: How is one supposed to do research on digital artefacts that are not obtainable? I am quite concerned about people removing things from the Internet, pretending they never published something. The Internet Archive is good, but it does not archive everything. Libraries are struggling with eBooks, trying to sort out how to organize lending. Amazon does not really sell copies of eBooks, but just lends them to you for a good price. They are only for you, and if you do something brash like terminate your account because of how they treat their seasonal workers, then all of your eBooks are gone.

Let's take this a step further to scientific works. When a researcher leaves an institution, will their homepage with their digital preprints be preserved? When a researcher dies, will there be a digital curator for their published works? Can researchers who are accused of cooking data or plagiarism just remove their works from online and pretend that they mistakenly put up a preliminary version or that it never was published at all? How are we going to deal with this?

Paper does have something going for it. You can still find it and read it 100 years later.