Scandal in the world of writing

The Opal Mehta book scandal continues. Today, I read a few articles about this that were a little depressing.

First, I do think it's great that the publishing world is actually saying it's not okay to plagiarize. (It was okay to lie, though. :) I deal with plagiarism more than I ever expected to in the editing world, and I think people have no clue how prolific it is. Little, Brown is not going to reissue the Opal Mehta books--they are recalling the unsold copies and the second book will not happen.

Hopefully, the young author (19) will have learned a huge lesson, and will continue to write if she is as gifted as it seems otherwise. Maybe she'll have another chance one day, although I imagine her road will be really tough from here on out.

I did find it interesting that the Sisterhood books, which I was raving about in my last post, came up in the articles I read. Apparently, Ann Brashares has the same agent (now or in the past, not really sure) as Kaavya Viswanathan (Opal's author) and the same book packager did the books. Another lady came up with the idea for the Sisterhood books, but wasn't chosen to actually write them--Brashares did. Brashares is obviously a good writer, given the success of the books and in my own opinion, but the lady with the original concept didn't get much more than a nod (and a tiny bit of compensation) for it. Not sure how I feel about that.

The publishing world is indeed an interesting one. As Annie and the girls said, "It's a hard-knock life."