AP: Cassie Edwards “Takes… From Reference Books”

The controversy over Cassie Edward‘s repeated echoing of previously published material in several of her Native American-themed romance novels trickled up to the mainstream media yesterday, as Hillel Italie interviewed Edwards for the AP. Edwards said “she sometimes ‘takes’ her material ‘from reference books,’ but added that she didn’t know she was supposed to credit her sources,” because nobody had ever asked her to do that. Then she put her husband on the phone so he could tell Italie his wife “doesn’t lift passages.” (John M. Barrie, a real expert on plagiarism, isn’t as generous towards Edwards’ appropriations as her husband is, telling Italie it’s a bunch of straight-up swipes.)

Meanwhile, romance fans online are calling bullshit on Signet‘s quick assertion that their bestselling author had merely engaged in “reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing.” The comments at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and additional feedback at Dear Author, including responses from several other romance writers, are essentially a catalog of outrage—including some boycott calls—over what Nora Roberts (who knows exactly what it feels like to be plagiarized by a bestselling author) calls “a very bad message to send to readers, to writers.”

It’s too bad cultural critic Henry Jenkins appears to have taken himself offline for a while—I’d love to hear his thoughts on this clear example of a fan culture policing the production of the products on which it’s based.

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