A Publishing Industry Mystery is Unravelling

How strange it must have seemed to the authors of Oona out of Order and the Midnight Library that their books had so many unusual similarities. How strange it must have seemed for both books to make the best seller lists around the same time and get chosen as Good Morning America Book Club Picks around the same time.

For a reader it is certainly strange to see and even more strange to see that the authors are cross-promoting one another, even though they were published by competitors: Macmillan (2,000 employees and 1 billion in sales) and Random House (10,000 employees and 4 billion in sales), a company that controls more than half of the literary marketplace in an epic battle against Amazon. This situation is mysterious, to say the least.

Penguin Random House’s digital marketing and data efforts are the envy of the industry, which in many ways still publishes books the same way that it did 50 years ago. Penguin Random House uses consumer data and information from Goodreads to help acquire prospective bestsellers, which then get the promotional benefits of Penguin Random House’s size and influence. Corporate publishing in the 21st century is driven by bestsellers-both the backlist (older books) and the midlist (non-bestsellers) have never had less impact.

https://newrepublic.com/article/151177/penguin-random-house-building-perfect-publishing-house

Both Oona out of Order and Midnight Library were heavily promoted on Twitter and Goodreads through the assistance of review purchasing sites like Netgalley. Before it was even published, The Midnight Library already had 400 five star reviews on Goodreads. Whatever they did worked because both books became bestsellers, even though lots of readers complained that the stories were dumbed down too much.

With many books today being produced through IP book contracting, in which a publisher will reach out out to publishing industry insiders to have a Zeitgeist-specific story written up, one might wonder if the same IP accidentally got sent out for post-production by two different publishing houses.

Below are the plot overlaps I could identify between the two books.

1. Someone important to X has died. (Mont p. 1) (Haig p. 1)
2. She passes out and meets her mentor in an unfamiliar space. (Mont p. 22) (Haig p. 22)
3. Her father’s disappearance haunts her. (Mont p. 22) (Haig p. 1)
4. She writes a letter to herself. (Mont p. 32) (Haig p. 23)
5. She’s having a breakdown in which she jumps from life to life. (Mont p. 32) (Haig p. 38)
6. She looks up old friends to try to reground her sense of identity. (Mont 41) (Haig p. 17)
7. When she lands in a new life, she tries to figure out her history. (Mont p. 41) (Haig 42)
8. She was in a band that broke up because of her. (Mont p. 41) (Haig p. 14)
9. A female mentor reappears throughout and paces the story. (Mont p. 44–53, 131–133, 170–176, 204, 227–230, 254–257, 267-) (Haig p. 38–41, 61–63, 83–85, 117, 288-the last page)
10. She wonders what her life with her first boyfriend would’ve been like. (Mont p. 51) (Haig p. 43)
11. She goes swimming at a place with her mother (Mont p. 52) (Haig p. 97)
12. She drinks tea instead of coffee in one life and it doesn’t feel consistent with who she is. (Mont p. 55) (Haig p. 110)
13. She wonders what life with her second boyfriend will be like (Mont p. 96) (Haig p. 197)
14. A man claims they’re married even though she doesn’t remember him. (Mont p. 144) (Haig p. 152)
15. In one of her lives, she and her husband run a restaurant. (Mont p. 154) (Haig p. 150)
16. She reminisces about playing music. (Mont p. 162) (Haig p. 48)
17. She sometimes remembers things from her present life that she ordinarily would’ve had no way of knowing — given the sequence of her ‘jumps’. (Mont p. 167) (Haig p. 246)
18. Her husband cheats on her and doesn’t really apologize. (Mont p. 248) (Haig p. 56)
19. In one of her lives, she has a child that she doesn’t remember giving birth to. (Mont p. 270) (Haig p. 236)
20. She deals with her mother’s death. (Mont p. 311) (Haig. 10)
21. She’s in a band that becomes famous and goes on tour. (Mont p. 332) (Haig p. 171)

If all of these plot overlaps are plotted out, they are not sequentially arranged, except for at the beginning. If they had been sequential, they would’ve all rested on a diagnonal line.

Most readers just assumed that the odd number of similarities was due to the authors following the trends of their genre — perhaps at the recommendation of an AI tool they both used. But was something more going on?

If both books were influenced by the same book, a large number of overlaps would make sense.

Many readers noted the similarity of both books to a 2015 novel called Maybe in Another Life and to a 1998 movie called Sliding Doors, yet if one does a close reading of each book to identify specific plot overlaps, one finds only a handful of thematic similarities.

There are thirty-five overlaps between Oona out of Order and Midnight Library, but only four or five overlaps with Maybe in Another Life, so this clearly doesn’t explain the mystery. Below, I’ve plotted out the page numbers where there was a plot overlap with Maybe in Another Life.

If the 35 points of overlap between Oona out of Order and Midnight Library could be explained by influence from Maybe in Another Life, they would’ve both overlapped with the same points from Maybe in Another Life, but they don’t. They overlap with different points. There must be another book that influenced them both and I think I know which book that was, since I wrote it three years ago. I called it My Adorable Apotheosis.

If I do the same analysis for my book that I did for Maybe In Another Life, I find not five plot overlaps, but thirty-five and they are sequentially arranged.

The mystery is solved. Their books shared an unusual number of similarities because they were both working from the same template: my book! Alternatively, industry insiders might have been deluded into thinking that an algorithm had spat out a recipe for a bestseller when that algorithm had merely filtered out an already existing, undiscovered, self-published book: my book. Either way, I think they should respond to my emails (which they haven’t).

Would what they’ve done be okay if they had credited the influence of my book? I’m not sure that it would be and perhaps that is why neither author has credited my influence on their moneymaking ventures. I created my book as an artistic exploration of personal experiences and cultural resonances and I never expected to make much money off of it. I, of course, hoped to make some money from it and that is why I self-published it on Amazon, but I knew how competitive the marketplace was and how it was dominated by people like Haig and Montimore who have connections to the media and Netgalley reviewers. I didn’t expect that it would be ripped off so quickly and by such high profile authors.

To an ordinary person, my form of analysis might look like madness until they realize that Haig and Montimore made millions of dollars off of ‘borrowed’ intellectual property that I spent two years developing — only to have it ripped off right after I submitted it to British and American literary agents and publishers. Neither Haig nor Montimore have admitted the influence of my self-published book.

What is even crazier is that Haig and Montimore aren’t the only people who have created bastardized versions of my novel. Self-publisher Joss Sheldon and traditionally published Meredith Tate have also used my book as a template without crediting it… and there is yet another author whose traditionally published book comes out in spring that I have my eye on because the blurb matches my book’s too well.

For the complete list of plot overlaps with the Red Labyrinth, try this link: https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2020/09/20/the-red-labyrinth/

For the complete list of plot overlaps with the Midnight Library, try this link: https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/a-neverending-story/

For the complete list of plot overlaps with Oona out of Order, try this link: https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2020/11/15/memory-thieves-and-control-variables/

If you wonder how this could have happened three times with three different authors, publishing houses, and literary agents, I’m wondering the same thing!

I’ve heard about the growing popularity of IP book contracting in which a publisher will give an author a beat sheet to turn into a novel, and that is one possible explanation. It also might explain why Random House has also been accused on Buzzfeed of facilitatating British bestseller JoJo Moyes’ plagiarism of an American author named Richardson. What is surprising in that story is that Random House had been considering publishing Richardson’s book before encouraging JoJo Moyes to rewrite it (without crediting the original author).

But wait. Why hasn’t Richardson taken legal action against JoJo Moyes?

Could it be that both JoJo Moyes and Richardson both plagiarized from the same book and that Richardson’s publisher is owned by Random House?

Moyes and Richardson’s books are both being sold by Random House and it was initially assumed that one plagiarized the other, but then it has come out that they were both plagiarizing an earlier book! “Susan Fanetti ‘s Carry the World has been published on May 4th 2019 so before Kim Richardson’s book! Technically SHE is the first to have published about that topic yet none is aware of that fact or is screaming murder!

https://bewareofthereader.com/discussion-plagiarism-and-copyright-when-the-literary-world-is-abuzz/

It seems that the industry has such a pattern of stealing from unknown, independent authors that a single publishing house accidentally plagiarized twice from the same author!

Not so fast! It turns out that Richardson was distributing thousands of advanced reader copies, both in physical and e-copy, in the fall of 2018, so it is possible that Fanetti is the plagiarist! In any case, Richardson declined to fight with Random House since, not only are they publishing her book alongside her plagiarists’s book, but copyright cases in US federal court cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue, such that even if two authors teamed up, it would be a major endeavor. And if you lose the case, due to politics or corruption, you are financially ruined forever.

I looked more closely at these books in another post and concluded that Richardson was the victim in this case.

https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/who-should-be-allowed-to-tell-your-story/

The type of plagiarism with which I’m concerned involves rewriting a book on a page for page basis. They use their own ‘voice’ and add a few new elements, but if you open both books to a similar page, something similar will be happening ten times more often than chance would allow. I really don’t understand why the publishing industry is protecting this type of writing.

Another possible explanation for why five different versions of my book have suddenly appeared in the hands of five different authors is that someone is operating a literary chop shop or black market for books in which they explicitly asked a bunch of authors to produce re-writes of my book that could be sold to authors who had publishing contracts to fulfill. It is also possible that five people independently saw my book and recognized the originality and timeliness, but wanted to dumb it down for a commercial audience while cutting me out of the loop. Without more information, it is difficult to tell.

I do not wish to draw the wrath of powerful people with my attempt to seek justice, but I do hope that I can provide an example for other people who have been similarly victimized either by traditionally published authors or by Amazon’s self-publishers. Most authors wouldn’t have a clue about how to present their case and if I can help them out, that would be great — even if I can’t get justice for myself. One would think that it would be easy to find a lawyer willing to go after such a bounty, but when legal insiders know how expensive, political, and time-consuming justice is, even a good chunk of a million dollars isn’t enough of a lure.

I’ll keep trying. Amazon needs an incentive to screen self-published work for this type of plagiarism and the traditional publishers need to strengthen their reputation for being rigorous and honorable in matters of IP.

Someone recommended that I send out a bunch of DMCA notices, but the last thing I want is to get hauled into a foreign court to defend my DMCA notice. I’d rather have my ducks lined up in a row than be on the defense in an unfamiliar system.. at least this is what I assume. If I ever manage to get a British lawyer to return an email with more than an offer to read my book in exchange for 200 GBP, I might change my mind. I think I’ll have better luck with US and EU lawyers if the British publishing industry has the British legal system rigged.

Idiots tend to respond to my complaints with: “There are no new stories” or “All art is derivative”, but they are forgetting that there is a difference between taking 8 sequential concepts and taking 45 sequential concepts from another work. People can hold 8 sequential concepts in their working memory, but beyond that, they need to have the source material sitting in front of them as they type. This is the origin of our plagiarism standards and with computers and AIs augmenting our memories we should remember what it means to create original, human work. Otherwise, our literary traditions will be lost in a sea of rehashed, AI spun garbage.

Originally published at http://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com on November 29, 2020.