My point was how valid is Edwards' copyright (trying to make a joke ... maybe I should have resorted to an emoticon) (that's another joke).

I'm hoping various and sundry people will go after her - she's been lifting other people's work for 20+ years, and she's made bunches of money. I don't think the excuse of "well, she's 70-however-many years old" is going to play well, and I don't think her own "well, isn't that how you do research?" will either.

In related news, Romantic Times had its convention/conference last week, including a session on how to do research without plagiarizing the material. It was, seemingly, well attended and people paid attention, took notes, even.

What, Toddson, you don't want a lecture on copyright? I'm sure I have my powerpoints right here somewhere...

Seriously, wouldn't it be great if somebody made a pile of money off her, at this late date? Double extra points if the plaintiff is some flavor of Indian, and shows up in court wearing a Savile Row suit and a very short haircut.

"Hey lady! I got your frelling we-sha-sha right here!"

Actually, I think a lot of the info about copyright law was pretty thoroughly discussed back when this first came up.

And I would LOVE it if a whole bunch of people representing original copyright holders - including a frelling Pulitzer Prize winning novel - all filed civil suits and got lots and lots of money from her. Perhaps the court could order that she attend classes on copyright infringement and plagiarism.

I think the court should order her to walk across the state of Kansas while wearing rawhide underpants. And when she gets to the other side of Kansas, she should have to butcher a fresh buffalo and cook dinner.

The thing that weirdly irks me about Cassie Edwards is that I don't get the feeling she did any of it maliciously. Which is not to excuse her at all, but I get the sense that she's honestly not smart enough to know the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing, or how to cite and use research.

Maybe it just pisses me off because her novels are CRAP without the lifted bits. There are good romances and bad romances, just as in any other genre, and hers are just hideously bad to begin with.

Unfortunately, Signet was only one of the publishers Edwards was working with--so far, Dorchester and one other publisher, I want to say Kensington but am not sure, haven't repudiated her.

And may I just say I am NOT looking forward to the recommendations that come up next time I load Amazon, since I was just digging through her backlist to try to track down her third publisher?

Oh, hah. But I think there's a way you can tag recent searches to not affect your recommendations.

I'm pretty sure Kensington still owns some of her backlist. They did a few years ago, anyway. Desire's Blossom was one shining example.

I've never read any Cassie Edwards - the covers and titles were enough to scare me away and then I read some reviews, so I can't speak to the quality (or lack thereof). But the plagiarism thing ... I think making her pay the people who did the actual writing she stole would be punishment enough. And Amy, I agree with you that she didn't seem to realize that what she was doing was wrong - from all reports, she seemed to think this was how you did research. BUT ... I know that my freshman year in college, they had us scared to the point we were footnoting everything (I had someone footnote me when I gestured to the curve of a statue in the museum), so you'd think in 20+ years of writing she'd catch on.

The guy who wrote the article about the ferrets (really - WTF? ferrets?) was kind of amused. He bought and read the book, the Smart Bitches interviewed him. Several readers of the blog propositioned him (which he took in good humor ... don't think he took any of it that seriously). Nora Roberts matched funds and they raised $10K to save the ferrets, so some good came out of it.

It even made the Christian Science Monitor recently: [link]

Nothing new, except that Monitor!