Back in my first year of college, my English 101 prof mentioned the importance of original work and how hardcore the punishments are for plagiarists. A student questioned his definition; "If we forget to put quotes in the correct place because of a typo, do we get expelled?"

Our professor explained; a simple "typo" situation is a mistake, and true plagiarism is intentionally stealing someone's work and calling it your own. If this author took the words out as written, then I can't say she didn't screw up, but if she rephrased the passages and borrowed the ideas, there's no way she should be punished for it, since as you said, stuff like that happens all the time.

In the academic (undergrad) world, there's also a sub-clause of plagiarism; self-plagiarism. Handing in an assignment you did two years ago for your midterm is grounds for failing a course, though that's a professor's discretionary thing.

 

Oh, she definitely plagiarized; there are numerous side by side examples on the wikipedia page I quoted from, and her publishers were satisfied enough that she did to cancel her book and remainder all copies, which must have left them out some hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My pondering point was more about why what she did is considered such sinful plagiarism, while authors who write what are essentially cover-novels aren't penalized or held accountable. It's a plagiarizing sin to "forget" quotations or reuse characters or actions that are obviously derivative, which is what the author in question did. Yet honestly, isn't that less of a sin than writing an entire novel that basically uses LoTR, or Star Wars, or other fantasy classics as a template?

It's just funny how the rules work. If you take a paragraph straight out of LotR depicting Gandal blowing smoke rings or whatever, people will notice and you'll be pilloried for plagiarism. But if you write an entire fantasy series where young, small humanoids are guided by a wise, semi-kindly, mysterious, powerful, immortal wizard, that's fine. Thus does the magic of archetypal characters trump the nit picking details of some minor character's clothing.

And yes, I say this as a man working to market a novel that began life as Diablo II fan fiction. *cough*

 

I wonder if that means her book will become a collector's item, particularly a 1st edition?