Plagiarism Hits the Headlines Again

Last week a news story revealed that a Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, copied portions of another book in order to write hers. She has claimed that the over twenty accounts of similarity are unintentional. She had read the book yet, never copied it. She stated that parts of it were in her memory, so of course it came out in her writing.

Again, the same young student is under the spotlight when similarities to another book has been revealed. It seems that sentences and phrases have been lifted from yet another source. Viswanathan is not responding to the press.

Many questions come to mind when I first heard about this story. First of all, the human jealous part of me asks- how did she land a six figure book deal with a top publisher and she hadn't written the book yet? This is her first book, yet the company has taken a chance on her. That doesn't just happen every day. Second of all, I think it's pretty fishy that she is accused of lifting passages from two books of similar genre. How much of a passage needs to be changed in order to make it your own?

It will be interesting to see over time how the big publishers battle this one out. It will be Little, Brown against Random House and Dell.