Industry & Advocacy News
June 28, 2013
An author caught selling a book that plagiarizes from works by romance writers Tammara Webber and Jamie McGuire is blaming a rogue ghostwriter for the copying and has removed the book from all sales outlets.
The author, Jordin Williams, tweeted: “I am officially letting all funds go. I’m sadden by this that a ghostwriter did this through guru. Thankfully I never received any money.”
Jane Litte of the Dear Author blog noticed the plagiarism and posted screen shots of Williams’ Amazingly Broken alongside strikingly similar passages from Webber and McGuire Wednesday. The book was pulled within hours of the Dear Author post, after readers complained directly to Amazon and to Williams via social media.
In a Twitter conversation posted by Jason Boog on the GalleyCat blog, Williams apologized directly to Webber and McGuire. She said she hired the writer who copied their work through the online freelancer marketplace odesk.com (she earlier thought she’d used Guru.com). Williams tweeted, “I take the blame. Just saying how it happened. I do wish someone would give me a website to check plagiarism of ‘books’. Others don’t work.”
