In October 2019 I sued Emma Chase,
EverAfter Romance, and Simon and Schuster for
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
of my book Part-time Princess and repurposing it into Royally Screwed.
Part-time Princess is the ‘PG-13’ royal romantic comedy that I wrote and published 7/28/14 after my mom got sick and died. Royally Screwed by Emma Chase published over two years later on 10/16/16. I first blogged about it in ROYALLY HORRIFIED.
I’m adding more side by side comparison graphs displaying overlap between the books. In addition to the Kindle Percentages used to mark the overlap I’m also updating the graphs with
Chapter and page numbers taken from the paper books.
I’m doing this to give readers a few different options to keep track of all the lifts.
Please look at all the re-written material in the above chart, then look at the page numbers. You will see the repurposed material lies in close proximity — a CLUSTER. This is not ‘coincidence.’ This is not ‘inspiration.’ Part-time Princess was WIDE OPEN while it was being repurposed.
PLAGIARISM isn’t just ‘Copy & Paste.’
There are varying types of plagiarism. An article by Raimo Streefkirk on Scribbr explains the various types of plagiarism. What was done to my book is primarily Mosaic plagiarism although there is some Copy & Paste.
“Verbatim Plagiarism – (copy & paste)
“If the structure and the majority of the words are the same as in the original, then it is verbatim plagiarism, even if you delete or change a couple of words here and there.”
Mosaic Plagiarism (Patchwork plagiarism)
“means copying phrases, passages and ideas from different sources and putting them together to create a new text. This includes slightly rephrasing passages while keeping many of the same words and structure as the original.
This type of plagiarism requires a little more effort and is more insidious than just copying and pasting from a source, but plagiarism checkers like Turnitin can still easily detect it.”“Types of Plagiarism” by Raimo Streefkirk – Jan. 17, 2018 – updated Jan 14, 2020
My book was re-written and re-purposed without my consent. Part-time Princess is NOT in public domain, nor is it free for the taking. Ms. Chase NEVER licensed Part-time Princess.
My book is not a royal romance ‘STARTER KIT.’
My book is not something you can buy, download, move scenes about, flip sentences, making it easy peasy for an opportunistic author to skip the part about creating a world, a plot, a hero, heroine, and side characters. Instead that author can concentrate on writing over my story with RHYMING words, SEX, and ADVERBS.
Here’s a newly published (7/23/2020) sequence of overlap between Part-time Princess and Royally Screwed. This is close to ‘The End’ in both books.
A Scene close to the end of both books where the Heroine has returned to her home town in the States.
The Hero professes his love for her and travels from his foreign county to her place of employment — a bar/restaurant to win her heart.
I’ll be updating the blog more frequently.
What I’ve shared is the tip of the iceberg. I’ll be adding a blog page with primarily just the graphs of the overlap I have made public. I’ll be adding Chapter and page numbers taken from the paperbacks. I’ll be adding additional information that I am allowed to share. Please understand that as much as I’d love to share everything — I’m just not allowed to do that. That’s how litigation works.
Please remember that both myself and Ms. Chase are real people living real lives. Try not to bully or bash either of us on social media. That’s not cool and that’s not going to solve this problem.
Besides — I can’t help but wonder if someone gave Ms. Chase BAD ADVICE…
If you are at all inclined — please contribute or share my Go Fund Me. Litigation isn’t cheap. I’d appreciate any help you are comfortable giving. https://www.gofundme.com/f/big-pub-amp-authors-stop-repurposing-our-books
As always — thank you to those people that have been so kind to me during this process. The re-purposing of my book has gutted me.
A bigger brand author re-wrote my book without my consent. Big Pub and the author have repurposed the copy/derivative work EVERYWHERE. Do you think I’m the only Indie Author that Big Pub is doing this too?
We need to stick up for ourselves and our works or “copyright” won’t mean a thing.
Pam DuMond
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