Comments on: Publishers Lunch Scoops Viswathan Plagiarism story http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2006/04/publishers-lunch-scoops-viswathan-plagiarism-story/ Timely, colorful, thought-provoking and concise Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:33:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: wfzimmerman http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2006/04/publishers-lunch-scoops-viswathan-plagiarism-story/#comment-37 wfzimmerman Wed, 26 Apr 2006 16:16:45 +0000 http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2006/04/25/publishers-lunch-scoops-viswathan-plagiarism-story/#comment-37 Publishers Marketplace has now posted <a href="http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/lunch/Passages.pdf" rel="nofollow">the PDF document prepared by Crown listing possibly infringing passages.</a> This is a curious document. At first glance, many of the alleged similarities are rather underwhelming with only a few words from a paragraph the same from book to book. Yet the cumulative effect is to persuade the reader that McCafferty book was indeed used as a template -- whether from unconscious "channelling" or somewhere in the book packaging process. The other irony is that in my estimation many of Viswanathan's choices are smarter, snappier, and more euphonic than McCafferty's. I'm too lazy or too busy (take your pick!) to walk through the specifics, so take a look at <a href="http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/lunch/Passages.pdf" rel="nofollow">the PDF </a> and judge for yourself. Publishers Marketplace has now posted the PDF document prepared by Crown listing possibly infringing passages. This is a curious document. At first glance, many of the alleged similarities are rather underwhelming with only a few words from a paragraph the same from book to book. Yet the cumulative effect is to persuade the reader that McCafferty book was indeed used as a template — whether from unconscious “channelling” or somewhere in the book packaging process. The other irony is that in my estimation many of Viswanathan’s choices are smarter, snappier, and more euphonic than McCafferty’s.

I’m too lazy or too busy (take your pick!) to walk through the specifics, so take a look at the PDF and judge for yourself.

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