The Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, where the questions concerning Cassie Edwards‘s possible plagiarism were first raised, has received a new statement from Signet, which initially defended Edwards’ repeated lifting of passages from earlier books as “reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing of another author’s words… for the purpose of creating something new and original.” The new statement backs down from that position significantly:

“Our original comments were based on Signet’s review of a limited selection of passages. We believe the situation deserves further review. Therefore we will be examining all of Ms. Edwards’ books that we publish, and based on the outcome of that review we will take action to handle the matter accordingly. We want to make it known that Signet takes any and all allegations of plagiarism very seriously.”

Pity the low-ranking editorial assistant whose job it now is to actually read all of Cassie Edwards’s Signet novels looking for the didactic passages that may have their origins in earlier books on Native American culture.