There has already been a fair amount of noise about debut novelist Kaavya Viswanathan over the past couple of days: about her NYT best-seller, and her big two-book advance ($500K) and her film option with Dreamworks…and the fact that she’s been accused of plagiarizing author Megan McCafferty’s novels Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. (See here for the Harvard Crimson article that seems to have broken the story.)
Interesting enough was the comparison between a statement she gave one of her local newspapers, the Newark Star-Ledger (“Nothing I read gave me the idea for these books”) and her letter of apology (“When I was in high school, I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, ‘Sloppy Firsts’ and ‘Second Helpings’… Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel … and passages in these books….”). But most interesting to me at this point, though, is that the latest statement from McCafferty’s very annoyed publisher, Crown, says that they have located “at least forty” incidences of strong similarity or verbatim quoting.
In the screen industry, at least, “Forty points of similarity” is the height at which the bar of proof is normally set for a plagiarism suit to become viable. I have a feeling there is either about to be — besides the offered revision with “inappropriate similarities removed” — either a big fat out-of-court settlement, or a yanking of the present edition from the shelves, or maybe both. And Spielberg only knows what’s going to happen to the film option. It’s so easy for even strong pitches with impeccable pedigrees to get dumped into Turnaround Hell these days… (4/29/06: turns out my guess was right on both counts — the book’s been pulled, and development of the project at DreamWorks has been stopped.)
But either way, I think it’s probably going to take Viswanathan’s first book a lot longer than expected to earn out, Times list or no Times list. In particular, I’m thinking about language I’ve seen in some of my contracts that states any lawsuit my publisher suffers due to my work becomes my financial responsibility…
(Side note to all this: It was McCafferty’s fans who tipped her off. I’ve been there, too… Thank you, folks, for watching our backs.)
(Also, a note to “The Big Meow”subscribers: I’m better today — at least I can see out of these eyes, now. Chapter 3 will be going up this afternoon, and an email with the location and login info will be going out to you then. The “open release” date will as a result be kicked forward to May 3rd, and I’m going to try to get Chapter Four finished early to compensate for this five-day delay. Thanks to everybody for being so patient.)
Now playing: Ian Lynn – Introduction – Do You See / Seven Bridges
