Why Opal Mehta is a must read, and how to get rich "borrowing" other people's ideas.
It seems Kaavya Viswanathan has "borrowed" material from more than one source. She is the 17 year old Harvard student who wrote, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Her publisher pulled the book after many similarities were found between it and a book by Megan McCafferty.
New reports are coming out that she also has many similarities between her book and one written by Sophie Kinsella, called, "Can You Keep a Secret?" One of the passages concerns a fight between friends over animal rights. In Kinsella's book, it says, "The mink like being made into coats.
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It just doesn't end...
I swore I'd leave Kaavya alone after some of the comments I made about her last week, but I see it's not over. Apparently the formula for writing a bestselling novel here is borrowing a character from one novel, a few plot points from another and top it off with a few great passages from someone else's. Good grief! I know there's going to be similarities within a genre, but there are just too many to be a coincidence here. Getting caught plagiarizing is good publicity too. I checked at my public library yesterday. "Opal Mehta" is now on a huge waiting list, probably because they can't buy the book.
Good post!
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Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe
That figures. I read a
That figures. I read a chapter from a marketing book this last week, and one of the things it said was that if you can cause a scandal over your product, you will get many more orders for it. If you can get Congress to hold hearings over it, you are a guaranteed millionaire. That's probably very accurate. It would not surprise me too much to hear that Viswanathan, Dan Brown, or even James Frey had started the controversies themselves. After all, I had not heard of "Opal Mehta" before this. I don't watch Oprah so I hadn't heard of Frey either. And Brown? The movie will do well, and that will help the books do even better.
Opal...
I didn't know the author was only a teenager. I think it would be worse if she was an older adult who knew better. This sort of makes me want to read the book, but I would never buy it. I will never support plagiarism.
Dreams Matter.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/6562/pchan_stockton.html