The big steal: rise of the plagiarist

Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to steal other people's work. There's also a high risk you'll be found out. So why do it? Rhodri Marsden goes in search of a little originalityIt's not that hard to think of something totally original. If you don't worry about it being any good, it's easy. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," was Noam Chomsky's spirited attempt in his ground-breaking 1957 book on linguistics, Syntactic Structures. "Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers," was Stephen Fry's during an episode of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. But when novelist John Gardner used the phrase "opening the throttle at the last moment" in his 1983 book Icebreaker, it's unlikely that he sat back and congratulated himself on being the first to have written it. Innovation wasn't what he was aiming for, after all; he was just trying to describe someone driving a scooter. But Google Books, that vast indexing project, informs us that Gardner's was the only book to contain this phrase until another, Vestige Of Evil by Len Vorster, appeared on Amazon in 2011. A section of the novel, one of two books self-published online under that name, featured other phrases that were no longer unique to Icebreaker, such as "the ice and snow were not as raw and killing as this" and "the slope angling gently downwards to flatten". The many coincidences were startling, though if it wasn't for the internet, nobody need ever have known.In... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]

Other Publishing stories related to: 'The big steal: rise of the plagiarist'


The big steal: rise of the plagiarist

Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to steal other people's work. There's also a high risk you'll be found out. So why do it? Rhodri Marsden goes in search of a little originalityIt's not that hard to think of something totally original. If you don't worry about it being any good,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2014-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Rise of Surender Mohan Pathak: HarperCollins India Wins Big With Hindi Pulp Fiction

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-12-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Frankfurt Book Fair 2017: With No Single Big Book, Multiple Memoirs Steal the Show

The tastemakers in the publishing industry spent big on a handful of novels, and a raft of memoirs at this year's fair. Some insiders mused that while the novels offer escapism, the memoirs give readers what they crave even more in these divisive times: a sense of connection with other people. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

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How to balance a big job with a big side hustle

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The big bang created the universe. What created the big bang?

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Is the Next Big Idea Club the Next Big Thing?

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Casting a wide net: the rise and rise of podcasts

Renowned for their diversity, the popularity of podcasts has skyrocketed in recent years. This has not passed publishers by with many harnessing the potential of the medium by launching their own shows.   Continue reading at The Bookseller

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Is Big Tech Merging With Big Brother? Kinda Looks Like It

The all-seeing Amazon, Google, and Facebook have every incentive to help the national security state undermine privacy, free speech, and democracy. We’ve read this book before. Continue reading at Wired

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Immigration in 2018: Rising tensions and rising voices

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[ Fast Company | 2018-03-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Canadian Publishing 2016: Big Books for a Big Country

Canadian publishing is dominated by some familiar names: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

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Frankfurt Book Fair 2015: No Big Book Yet, But Plenty of Big Sales

One thing the absence of a big book has meant is that a handful of titles—drawing strong advances from editors in the U.S. and abroad—are being clumped into an ever-growing list of buzzed-about books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-10-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Metamarkets Raises $6 Million To Help Big Web Publishers Corral Big Data

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