Discussion: Please Stop Plagiarising

Recently I have seen from quite a few fellow bloggers that there has been some issues. This issue hits close to home; I’m a writer, I want to be an author and if this ever happened to me, I would be devastated.

If you don’t know what I am talking about I’ll break it down. What I’m talking about is the fact that some people are copying and stealing reviews from other people and it’s a thing called plagiarising.

This isn’t right in any way, shape, or form. I don’t understand how people can do this. It’s not the fact that it’s not right (because it’s not), the fact is that it’s unfair.

It’s unfair to the original creator. They spend their own time, reading and then writing their review. A review doesn’t take 5 minutes.

First, the blogger has to read the book. This can take from 2 hours to 3 to 4 days. It all depends on how big the book is, how fast the bloggers reads, or how much time they have to read. Since you know, bloggers do have lives.

Then the bloggers have to write the review. This is different for each and every one of us. All bloggers write their reviewers differently. Some create graphics, or make/find gifs. Other bloggers are creative with their reviews. Others just write. However, each of these can take from an hour to a couple of days.

We don’t just write up a review in 5 minutes and publish it. We have to write it, create it, and edit it. We put a lot of work into our reviews, for you guys to read. But when people go and steal what we have taken our time doing and post it as their own. Hurts. It hurts like hell.

Yes, things like this happen in the world, but I don’t understand why it needs to happen. If you are not going to take your own time to read and review a book or movie – then don’t bother with blogging. I’m not trying to sound mean – but it’s the truth. If you don’t take the time to do the work, then don’t bother with blogging.

Nevertheless, if you are stealing someone else’s reviews are claiming them as your own; please stop. If you see someone that has been doing this, please let the person know that their reviews have been copied. If it’s on goodreads or amazon – then send them an email.

Do the right thing.

I hope you enjoyed. You can find me on twitter at @angel_reads and on facebook and also on Instagram at angelreads. Subscribe to my email through the sidebar or follow me on bloglovin’ to keep up to date

Millicent Nankivell

· Reply

August 28, 2015 at 1:35 AM

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been absent in the bloggerverse lately – absent altogether if I’m being honest. Life has been sucking badly, honestly. So I don’t know what this is in reference to, but I do know that it (unfortunately) isn’t a new problem. There are some people who do it just for kicks because they’re trolls, but there are some who do this kind of thing (not just limited to book blogging by the way) and then proceed to make money from the work of others.

I don’t know how those people sleep at night.

In the age of digital content creation, plagiarism is like the pirates ravaging on the high seas of creativity (I’m sorry – I’ve been up and in pain for almost 24 hours now – I’m seriously loopy XD ). Blow holes in their ship and they just hijack some poor turtle to help them continue their dirty deeds.

I was talking about this a little with Erin today though – peoples expectations of bloggers, and how much they underestimate and undervalue the level of work that goes into it. Regardless of what kind of content you share, blogging is a bit like a full time job – and it’s tough and time consuming.

People lack respect – both for themselves and for others.

Now that I’ve rambled nonsensically, I just wanted to say that it’s good to see someone taking the time to highlight the amount of work and consideration that goes into preparing a blog post – review or not. People stealing others content is not cool – and they usually get found out anyway.

Kelly

August 28, 2015 at 6:12 PM

I hear you Angel, I’ve been a victim of it and spent months battling against a plagiariser who even went as far to remove her Goodreads account, create a new one, befriended me and continued to steal content. There will always be those who want to claim a review as their own, I even know of a very prominent book blogger who is still a big part of the community who did it and got away with it. But it’s sites like Amazon and Goodreads who seemingly encourages the behaviour by not taking proof against plagiarisers seriously. I can’t tell you how many times I had contacted them, with proof and links of her crime and not one single reply. It took a stern and threatening message to her yet again for her to stop.

It should really go without saying that it does you no favours to plagiarise and steal from others, but there will always be one person who feels they’ve done nothing wrong by committing what they see is a victimless crime.

Cassie

August 31, 2015 at 8:10 AM

I will never understand people who just copy other people’s stuff and pass it off as their own…like, why do they even? What could they POSSIBLY get out of it?
I mean, I write reviews/blog in general because I enjoy it. But where is the enjoyment is just copying someone else’s stuff? I don’t even know…

Emily @ Loony Literate

September 1, 2015 at 10:59 PM

It makes me so sad that this is becoming more and more frequent 🙁 You’d think it would be common courtesy not to steal other people’s content, but apparently not.