Sharon from Sharon Loves Books and Cats saw that there was something suspicious and cross-referenced the reviews she wrote and the blogger's. It turned out that she did plagiarized and from several bloggers as well! I was surprised. I never really followed her so I wasn't familiar with the reviews, but this is absolutely shameful. As a blogger myself, I work very hard on my reviews. Lately I do admit my blog is lacking because it is the end of high school for me and I have things to do. However when I do review, I always try my best and edit it over a couple of times before uploading. To find out if someone has stolen my work, I would be very angry. If I put my time and effort into something I love and someone else takes credit for it, that's not right at all!
If you truly love blogging and reviewing, please don't steal someone else's content and tweak it to claim as your own. At that point, why blog or review if you are not putting your own effort into it? I'm sure in school everyone learned about plagiarizing. So please, don't do it, no matter how tempting.
If you find out someone is plagiarizing, alert the person who wrote the original post and kindly tell the plagiarizer to remove it. It will be greatly appreciated.
Edit: Everyone wants to know who the person is. I don't want to directly say, but check Twitter under the hashtag LiteraryPirate.
13 comments:
I agree with you completely. I have been following the said blogger for a while, and not to be rude, I admit I never really read her reviews in the first place since they never really told me what I wanted to hear from a review, it was really more about the contests. I never noticed when her reviews started to get better via her stealing them, but it is really changing the perception of the book blogger world. It makes it out to seem like it is all a competition when it is really about people who like to read giving their OPINIONS and reccommending. That diminishes when you start stealing. Anyways, sorry for the rambling, but this makes me really mad!!! I agree with you 100%.
Yes, it is the same reason for me following her too I admit. (Always felt a bit wordy in terms of review). I'm sure she's a nice girl and I don't want to bash her but she should've given it a second thought before ripping other people's content.
That's the reason I don't read a lot of other reviews verbatim. I follow a lot of other blogs, but, I really glance to see if they liked it and look at a rating. Now I'm curious who the blogger is!
Aw man, that really sucks! Not to sound nosy but now I'm really curious as to who this person is!! :P
-Briana
Aw, I remember seeing an alert on Twitter awhile ago about plagarized reviews, but I was on my iTouch & didn't feel like scanning through it on Safari :(
Asking to have books though, I think I know who you're talking about in this context. I remember getting a kinda rude e-mail wanting books (yes, plural) and saying they were "broke" and stuff... I went and checked that one though, and either the content's been deleted or it hasn't been updated in a while? :S
I think it's only natural when you read something like this to ask, "Who is it?" because you sincerely want to know who would actually have the audacity to do such a thing. No matter the number of your followers, you know that most of those also follow a lot of other book bloggers - and it's only a matter of time that they would put two-and-two together.
I'm not exactly understand the whole "copying" reviews. Your reviews are just simply your take and opinion of a book. If you read a book, then you have an opinion - no matter how similar or different it is to someone else's, it should sound different no matter what because you have your own voice. But, then again, maybe that's it ... maybe this person doesn't actually read the books, they just copy and do contests to get more popular? That kind of goes against everything a true book blogger stands for.
@Missy: I understand, people can have the same thoughts and probably the same writing style. However she did steal the content and promptly removed them all from her blog when she got caught. Now if people go on her blog, they would realize that there are less reviews now (if a follower).
@deltay: Not exactly sure who you're talking about but said blogger's content are still recent. Simply had the stolen reviews removed.
Great post. You put that very succinctly and stated your opinions honestly. I happen to agree with them, but I also appreciate the fact that you write well and you're interested in the topics you post about. Genuine blogging is important - thanks for being part of it!
To clarify: The blogger formerly plagiarized reviews. Any review she had plagiarized has since been taken down and - as she emailed me, like, two hours ago - she says she's stopped and is trying to start with a clean slate. I don't know what's she's up to now, but needless to say, it was a sad situation.
And yes - most of the tweets about her can be found under #LiteraryPirate. My hashtag for her. =)
It's unfortunate that someone would do this. Also, they will go down in the blogsphere forever as plagiarising because nothing ever gets deleted from the internet - twitter included. A shame.
Ouch, did not hear about this, thanks! And it's ironic that you post about this because I was just thinking about this yesterday... and I'm actually planning on making it my weekly debate topic for next week (though I'm focusing more on what to do post facto). I know my reviews aren't the best; some of them I take more time editting, some are just my straight up thoughts, but they all take TIME and much thought. I don't exactly know how I would feel if I knew someone was stealing them - maybe feel like ripping out a head or two, hehe.
Definitely will have to search up this blogger now...
Oh wow that is horrible! I have been hearing of that lately too...bloggers work hard on their reviews they shouldn't have to have their reviews plagarized!!
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