Erotic Romance Author Accused of Plagiarism from Fan Fiction
Last week, Twitter user @KokomRoily began to feel a creeping sense of déjà vu as they were reading a novel by prolific erotic romance author Romilly King. According to KokomRoily, the book felt familiar after reading the first chapter and, by the second they, “felt sure I could tell what was going to happen next.”
The reason was that, the book in question, Paid to Kneel, was plagiarized from an earlier work by a user named Blue_Jack that was posted on a Supernatural fan fiction forum. After some digging, KokomRoilly found multiple lengthy passages of verbatim copying and posted highlighted passages on their Twitter account.
This kicked off a broad investigation where authors and readers alike began to comb through King’s library of work, which includes more than 20 novels in the past year, to find other instances. While that investigation did bear more plagiarized fruit, it also caught up some innocent bystanders as King’s editors were targeted, despite being unaware of the plagiarism, as did various authors that shared the same editors and voice actors that work on King’s audiobooks.
King, for their part, has not responded to the allegations. A Twitter account connected with the author has been silent for over a week, and a Facebook page for their work has been either made private or removed.
In the meantime, the investigation into King’s work is continuing, with a Discord being launched to help organize and mobilize the movement. Likewise, KokomRoily is continuously updating their Twitter account as new information comes to light.
In short, the story may not be over, but it does appear that King’s career may well be, especially as many of the authors who were plagiarized are getting the plagiarized works removed from Amazon.
However, this case is a very fascinating one. It’s a fairly unique story in plagiarism and highlights the complexities of dealing with plagiarism when the intersection with copyright law is less-than-seamless.
Fan Fiction, Professional Plagiarism
One of the reasons that this story has received so much attention is because of the parties that are involved. King is, or at least was, a prolific professional author that had carved out a fan base for their work. Blue_Jack, on the other hand, is a fan fiction author that writes and posts their stories for free on forums dedicated to the topic.
As we’ve discussed in the past, fan fiction and fan art is a very messy scene from a legal perspective. Though most creators and rightsholders tolerate or even encourage non-commercial fan creations, commercial fan fiction is generally seen as both legally and ethically taboo in the industry.
Though there have been some attempts to legitimize commercial fan fiction, such as Kindle Worlds in 2013, those efforts have largely been short-lived, and the fan fiction community remains almost entirely free of commercialization. It’s a hobby that is created by fans for other fans.
To that end, the fan fiction community is no stranger to plagiarism. There have been many cases where a story published in one fandom was copied and converted into a very similar story in a different one. However, these types of issues are isolated within the communities themselves and are handled accordingly.
This case, however, is extremely different.
Here, a commercial and professional author took content from fan fiction communities and plagiarized them for profit. Not only does this sting a bit more, it also raises legal issues that aren’t present when matters are handled within fan fiction communities.
The reason is that fan fiction works are not authorized creations. Fan fiction authors don’t own the characters and stories that they base their works on. At most, they have a non-exclusive license to use those elements for non-commercial purposes.
However, they do own any original expression that they bring into the work. Most important for this case, that includes the exact words that they used to express their ideas.
That, in turn, appears to be a large part of why Blue_Jack was able to file a claim with Amazon and get the book pulled. However, if the plagiarism had been more limited or more vague, it could have gone very differently.
For one, it’s possible the plagiarism might not have incorporated any elements that can be protected by copyright. Second, it might have only involved elements that Blue_Jack didn’t own.
However, that was clearly not the case here. But this won’t be the last time someone plagiarizes fan fiction for commercial gain and the next one may not have as neat of an outcome.
Bottom Line
In the end, this story has about as happy of an ending as is practical. The plagiarism is clear-cut, the fan community responded well (outside attacking others not involved) and the authors are taking appropriate action.
However, this won’t be the last case like this. As more authors try to increase the rate they publish books, plagiarism will become a bigger and bigger temptation, and the fan fiction community will always be a tempting target.
The reason, as noted by the Daily Dot, is that themes that are prominent in fan fiction, especially erotic and romantic fan fiction, often times can be translated easily to other characters and other settings. Given that fan fiction communities remain one of the largest repositories of free literature available, it’s easy to see why a plagiarist may seek more than inspiration from within those virtual walls.
King likely isn’t the first, but they definitely will not be the last. This is an area to keep a close eye on, especially as self-publishing becomes more and more the norm.
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