That Was Me, I Did That (that's a lie)

BENJAMIN LEROY

You might not be able to keep up with the names in this story, and that’s ok, because I think some of them aren’t real.

Twitter was alive yesterday with the story of novelist “Jordin B. Williams” and her totally awesome book questionably constructed novel, Amazingly Broken. The novel, having been widely promoted on book blogs and having achieved some level of success on the Amazon bestseller list allegedly borrows heavily from at least two other novels—Easy by Tammara Webber and Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire.

I say allegedly only because we live in a hyper litigious world and I don’t want to look like I’m part of the Rush to Judgment Mob, but given the evidence that can be found over on the Dear Author website, it’s, uh, going to take some flashy legal maneuvering for Jordin B. Williams to win her case.

Then again, Jordin B. Williams doesn’t appear to be a real human being. So I’m not all that worried about being subpoenaed by the Book Police.

(UPDATED TO ADD - here's a screenshot of Jordin's author pic and bio courtesy of the blog Bookish Treasure that was able to find it 

So, what? Why do you care? Plagiarism happens all the time. What makes this special?

Glad you asked.

(1) The excuse initially laid out by “Jordin” is kinda awesome in the, “I’m going to make some shit up and hope nobody asks any follow up questions” department. What did Jordin say? Oh, nothing much, except “IT WAS A GHOSTWRITER. I DIDN’T EVEN WRITE THE BOOK! BLAME THE GHOSTWRITER!”

That’s right, our Lil’ Jordin didn’t even write the book. “Why are you so mad, Internet? I mean, I could understand if you thought I wrote the book and you thought I liberally grabbed large passages and made only the least half-hearted attempt at changing a word or two of somebody else’s writing to pretend it was my own, but IT WASN’T ME. It was a ghostwriter.”

Hiring ghost writers to write self-published debut novels is a frequent occurrence, sure, but the most notable occurrences, like Jeffrey Singlesmith’s New York Times best-selling book, The Dogpark in Heaven also got a push from a large record label and semi-famous athlete. Another example, Lisa Wynn Palmwinger’s The Parking Lot, the desperate story of a mother’s quest to teach her 7 year old daughter how to drive was based on a headline news story that we all knew about. It had a built in audience.

Actually, all of that last paragraph is bullshit. Those books don’t exist. Neither does any real market for ghostwritten debut novels by pseudonymous authors. So that’s one of the reasons I tell you Jordin’s story—the sheer hubris.

It’s also been deduced by some good ol’ fashioned internet detective work that Jordin may have other names and projects. But we can’t ask Jordin because all of the Twitter and Facebook homes have been razed and no forwarding address has been left behind. (UPDATE - the blog Bookish Treasures does as an awesome summary/takedown of the situation, including Jordin's bio calling "herself" a ghostwriter, read it here)

 

(2) Internet Outrage is another thing I’d like to discuss. Plenty of people were plenty pissed off at our literary wunderkind Jordin. Some of the people who had assisted with a blog tour for Amazingly Broken felt betrayed, as they had given the project credibility by featuring it on their websites. Totally understand why they’d be mad. Fans of Tammara Webber and Jamie McGuire, some of them personal friends of the authors, were mad because Tammara and Jamie were special victims of this special literary scam. I understand that, too. Still others thought Amazon should have been more proactive in identifying the plagiarism from the beginning and shouldn’t have allowed the book to be sold ever. At all. And if Amazon knew the whole story from the get go, I’m sure they would agree.

Sometimes outrage makes us say ridiculous things. Outrage mixed with a loose grasp of the reality on the ground makes it worse.

Example—everybody calling for Tammara, Jamie, and their respective publishers to sue “Jordin” for $$$ shouldn’t wait around for the trial. You’ve got a plagiarist who amounts to a non-entity in the publishing industry who made an insignificant amount of money (in the grand scheme of things) on a poorly conceived carny trick. Nobody is breaking out the legal team to hunt down “Jordin B. Williams.” I understand why you want to see Jordin get Hammered by Justice, but it isn’t going to happen in a courtroom.

Secondly, whoever runs DearAuthor.com did a great job of compiling evidence and updating the story as the day went on. It’s clear there was a lot of work put into finding examples of lifted paragraphs. The case was laid out in a compelling manner and left no real room for doubt.

However, there were other bloggers who were outraged by the deception (including one that had previously run a review of Amazingly Broken) who used the same jpegs of the infractions originally posted on DearAuthor.com and guess what...those bloggers didn’t attribute that work to the people who originally did it and where it was originally presented.

Seems like there’s a term for that—you know, when you present something as though you created it, but really somebody else did, and you aren’t giving them proper credit. If you’re going to throw rocks, make sure you’re not picking them up from the pile labeled “Hypocrite.”

Also, things like this happen, where somebody who doesn't actually understand what happened takes to Amazon to YELL ABOUT SOMETHING~!, totally getting the narrative all wrong (while being very self-righteous about it), in this instance, a "reviewer" accuses Tammara Webber of being the plagiarist. 

Anywho, in the spirit of focusing on more positive things. I’ll buy one copy each of Tammara Webber’s Easy and Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful Disaster to the first person who indicates they want a copy in the comment section below.

Comments

[NKSmith]

Well, I for one want a copy of both! :)

[Alicia B]

Great blog post! I would love a copy of Easy!! :)

[Benjamin LeRoy]

NKSmith, I'll get you a copy of Beautiful Disaster.

Alicia, you can have the copy of Easy.

Let me know which formats you want them in and I'll take care of the rest.

Ben

[Jeff Cohen]

That is without question the most confusing plagiarism story I've ever read. I might have to lie down for a while (MAN, I can procrastinate!).

[Shalanna Collins (Denise Weeks)]

If I were going to plagiarize something, it would NOT be the book _Easy_. I got the book a few months ago and read it because I wanted to see what YA stuff is like now (I am under contract for a YA urban fantasy/adventure and I wanted to check the "heat" level, for one thing). I did NOT think the prose was that wonderful, and the plot was really far-fetched and irritating, especially the ending. Also, either EASY stole from this other bad book called FLAT-OUT LOVE that irritated me even MORE but had marginally better sentence construction (but the ending was OUTLANDISH and made me mad, but I restrained myself from throwing the book against the wall because it was on the Kindle) or vice versa because they were so much alike. *I probably shouldn't be so hard on those books, but they just didn't come up to the standards I have for YA novels, having read a lot of the 60s/70s classics*

Good grief! I would choose some wonderful old classic that nobody reads now and would only steal the GOOD parts, of COURSE. And steal from more than just TWO. Sheesh! What do they teach them in the schools nowadays?!

Shame on this author. You aren't supposed to get caught!! *WINK*

[Shalanna Collins (Denise Weeks)]

And when I say "Easy stole from Flat-Out Love," I mean the IDEAS and the general cast of characters and so forth were so similar, NOT THE PROSE. I am not talking about plagiarism. It's a case of "so many of these are alike," because of the Zeitgeist or synchronicity or whatever. I mean they just weren't original and they were similar, and *yawn* I got bored with them, but YOUR mileage may well differ. For all I know, you will love EASY/FLAT and will hate THE DOOR INTO SUMMER, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and BELLWETHER. Just to clarify.

[NKSMITH]

I would like mobi, please!

[NKSMITH]

Also, thank you very much!

[NKSMITH]

just wondering if this has been sent/delivered or what was going on with it. Thanks.