A Report on A Problem in the Publishing Industry

By Kirsten Hacker

Ths report contains quantitative analysis of twenty bestselling books that have been generated by mining the manuscripts of lesser known authors for detailed templates or sequences of writing prompts. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kirsten Hacker
• Release date: Jun 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201823337

Book preview

A Report on a Problem in the Publishing Industry

Preprint By Kirsten Hacker

May 2021

Contents

Introduction

Section 1: The Plot

Section 2: Klara and the Sun

Section 3: The Midnight Library

Section 4: Uma and the Answer to Absolutely Everything

Section 5: Agency

Section 6: The Other Me

Section 7: Piranesi

Section 8: Oona Out of Order

Section 9: The Red Labyrinth

Section 10: Individutopia

Section 11: The Actuality

Section 12: Every Line of You

Section 13: Reset and Deleted

Section 14: Giver of Stars

Section 15: Me Before You

Section 16: Royally Screwed

Section 17: The DaVinci Code

Section 18: Furthermore

Section 19: Chuck Tingle

Section 20: Murakami

Conclusion

Introduction

I am an ex-physicist who quit her post-doctoral work to write a novel and raise her children. Shortly after my book was completed, it was re-written and published without my consent by several people associated with the British publishing industry. This led me to discover that I am not the only person who has had this problem and that there is an industry built up around the idea that copying books is okay, as long as the crime is difficult to detect.

This led me to investigate the types of tools that are enabling authors to profit off of copying that has been disguised by software tools. For example, there is a new research collective called Eleuther AI that is scraping the web for text to feed its GPT3-like algorithm. If you aren’t familiar with GPT3, it is a tool that has taken a huge text database and used it to generate logical sounding text — sometimes copying text directly from the database. In its most rudimentary form, it completes sentences for you and in its most advanced form, it completes paragraphs or stories for you by drawing from the database of text.

Eleuther AI’s tool first ranks all of the text in their 800 GB ‘pile’ according to upvotes, citations, and other quality metrics and then it undergoes more self-sorting, based on the sources from which users like to generate (copy) text. It basically allows users to filter out your best work from a pile of text — without knowing whose work it was, so if I see my sentences or paragraphs show up all over the web in slightly spun forms and the reason is that writers have been using Eleuther AI to generate their ‘work’, who was my plagiarist? The AI or the person who decided to use the AI to accelerate and improve their writing ability? Recall that it is an open source code, so there is no company that can be sued. Then again, Google gave Eleuther AI the computing resources to test their tool, so maybe they have some liability.. ha.

Did the Eleuther AI collaboration ask if they could scrape up my words into their tool? No. They just did it.

The tool is just doing what people do.. a software engineer might protest. But that engineer might not have a good sense of the difference between how a human being’s working memory functions and how a computer’s memory functions. There is a big difference because computer registers allow for the copying of much lengthier sequences than that of which a human memory is capable.

My guess is that these sorts of tools have been toyed with in government domain research groups, but it disappoints me to see these things employed in open-source, automated theft.

The MIT copyright notice about the code is amusing to read:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the Software), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

—The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modeling

I am quite concerned with this issue since after my novel was published in 2018, fourteen spun versions of my story were published, many by bestselling, brand name authors at major publishing houses and they many of them appeared to be working from templates or outlines of my novel that had a very specific, almost algorithmic structure:

eleven mythemes consisting of five mounts or plot elements each.

It took a lot of work for me to diagnose this structure and it surely took the authors of the rip offs far less time to create their ‘work’ with the assistance of database fishing tools that supplied them writing prompts in the exact same order as they appeared in my original work — my novel.

None of them credited any assistance from a detailed, 3 page outline supplied to them by goodness knows who and none of them credited assistance from a software tool, but I think they are still liable for copying even when they don’t know from whom they are copying. You need to know the source of your writing prompts.

I think that the creators of the software package should also be liable for giving me such a headache over this.. if only I could find out who they are!

I do not know which software packages each author used, but there are many that facilitate the distribution of detailed outlines, worldbuilding, and character profiles of a book to a group of authors. Consider that the owners of the book template service Plottr also runs a ‘service’ called ‘booksweep’ that convinces authors to send in their manuscripts so that they can be distributed to readers for reviews. That sounds like an unholy alliance.

Most people don’t know how easy it is to write a story if the story has already been written. I once did an experiment to find out how quickly I could write a story that had a detailed outline and it took me under a week. In contrast, it took me two years to finish my first novel. Finding the right way to express a timely idea takes time to develop and it takes seconds to steal.

Today, you can

•  Buy a software package called Plottr that will allow you to trade book templates with other writers. It is as easy as copying, pasting, and following the writing prompts.

•  Get a job writing 10 chapters per week with a company called Radish. They will pay you 500 dollars per week to write according to detailed outlines.

•  Get access to an AI writing assistant via the a program at the Bookpatch that promises to help you write a book in seven days.

•  Purchase a book from a Writing Services firm that will not trigger plagiarism detection tools. You can do the marketing and call yourself an author.

Surely these programs threaten the bottom line of major publishing houses and if such proprietary tools have left their hands and escaped into the public domain, they have an interest in stopping them, yet why do I keep seeing the products of these tools keep showing up in the hands of bestselling authors supported by major publishing houses?

It appears that not only is a culture of theft rampant within major publishing houses, IP book contracting and software writing assistants allow thieves to use a team effort to create plausible deniability when they utilize lengthy sequences of writing prompts from sources that are unknown or hidden from them.

When readers or authors conflate the similarity of books that share 4 consecutive plot overlaps and books that share 40 consecutive plot overlaps, quantifying the difference between inspiration and copying becomes necessary within a legal framework so that when an author is given a set of writing prompts from their agent, software tool, or publisher and they do not ask about the source of those prompts, they understand that they can still be held liable for infringing, even if they were assured that the source was legally validated through IP book contracting.

In this report, I will quantitatively characterize the problems I've encountered in the publishing industry and propose some metrics to help authors analyze books that appear to have used their work as a template, reference, or automated writing prompt generator.

Section 1

a.) Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a 2021 novel published by Faber and Faber, an imprint of Penguin Random House. It is her 7th novel, the 6th of which was made into a Netflix series starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman.

b.) Instead of featuring a person in a physics lab who is struggling with plagiarism, she features a person in a creative writing program who struggles with plagiarism.

c.) In each chapter of The Plot, Korelitz uses the same five plot elements that I use in each chapter of my book. This gives the appearance that she used my book as a detailed template or writing prompt generator to accelerate the creation of her product.

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The first chapter of both books shows how ambition/parental expectations stand in the way of X’s happiness.

The protagonist is an outsider in an elitist world where X feels insignificant and hates X’s job.

X does not feel supported by X’s parents in X’s chosen, academic career.

X enters this world as a disillusioned idealist, skeptical of academic goals.

X is weighed down by tedious study materials that fail to give X a sense of meaning.

The chapter ends with a sense of regret and foreshadowing of bad things ahead.

The second chapter of both books illustrates the environment in which he feels alienated.

X avoids poets and feels superiors to them.

X goes to an outdoor party with eager writers who want X’s approval, or so X imagines.

Drinking alcohol at a bar is mentioned. Then we learn about X’s impoverished dwelling and about how X’s landlord takes care of a baby as her occupation.

Someone of the same sex makes X feel physically inferior in this party environment.

We meet a potential love interest who attended the same university and who is a poet. X likes the attention from the love interest but isn’t really attracted to anyone other than X’s own ambition. As a result their conversation is awkward and goes nowhere.

We get a bit of material from my third chapter in The Plot‘s second chapter.

We get the impression that X views X’s self as quiet, polite, and responsible. Yet X feels destined for something better in life. X dislikes crazy nonsense.

X feels surrounded by people who do not measure up to his/her standards. X doesn’t have any real friends. X only has colleagues.

X feels tortured by pointless work and literature draws this into relief.

X identifies with/as a character who lost a sibling at a young age.

Sexual harassment is mentioned as a threat in this environment.

The third chapter of both books shows the protagonist surrounded by a bunch of lost souls who firmly believe in their purposeless academic endeavors and who are offering to pay the protagonist for validation of their efforts.

We meet the protagonist’s tormentors and their leader, an arrogant young man. They all believe that they are elite, chosen for this privilege.

There is a tense dialogue between the protagonist and the arrogant young man who is confident that he understands everything and that he is assured of success because he understands how the world works.

In this dialogue, one of the characters challenges the dogma of the academic industry to which they both belong. It comes across as shockingly blasphemous to the group.

The names of legends in their field are mentioned in defense from this scandalous attack.

The protagonist is reminded that his/her skills are for sale and this arrogant young man is prepared to pay for them.

The fourth chapter is very similar to the beginning of the second version of my book in which I gave a picture of the protagonist’s childhood. I tried to start the story in a few different ways to get the attention of agents. When viewed as a metaphor, just as in the fifth chapter of my book, this is the moment when the protagonist splits and creates his/her mirror self. In my book, a machine gives rise to this split, but in The Plot, an author creates their mirror self within the pages of the book they write.

She lives with her mother in the country in an old house,

She is studious and sullen, always concerned with her homework and upset about getting a single wrong answer.

Her mother’s best friend is her aunt.

Her mother ignores her, doesn’t cook for her, and she is skinny. They are not close or loving even though they live together. Her mother looks forwards to her daughter leaving and doesn’t care what she does. She is convinced that her mother had never liked her.

She studies hard because she wants to get far away from her home. She works at a local business in the small town. Getting money for college is her prime objective.

The fourth chapter concludes in a way which is similar to the third chapter of the first version of my book.

There is technical exposition about the degraded state of the discipline in which the protagonist views him/herself as an expert.

There are complaints about the obtuseness of the other members of his/her discipline.

The chapter concludes with a discussion between a neophyte and someone with a lot of experience in the industry. He warns the neophyte about the grim realities of the industry. How it chews you up and spits you out.

The neophyte doesn’t take his advice and decides to progress in the direction of ambition.

The advisor sighs and continues about his business with a sense that he knows the shape the young person’s future will take.

The fifth chapter covers the material I introduce in my fifth and sixth chapters

X’s job has become intolerable and we watch X go out in search of a job interview.

The interview is in an out of the way place X had never been before.

X ends up in a new job as a type of receptionist/caretaker for an academic operation.

The role was more symbolic than practical and X doesn’t feel that X’s academic training is utilized in more than a titular fashion.

X is primarily a figurehead for a bunch of fellow academics who are using a facility.

The sixth chapter is a lot like my seventh chapter shifted in location.

We meet the first customer at X’s new job. This person bursts into the central social space and makes a loud complaint.

The only person who bothers talking to X is unrelentingly negative about life and career prospects, complaining about the rules of the game and lack of recognition for his brilliant ideas.

This crotchety, arrogant person is notable for showing no interest whatsoever in the experiences of X to whom he/she was lecturing.

The scene concludes by returning to X’s own self reflection on X’s own career prospects.

In this environment, the protagonist is treated as invisible and X doesn’t like that. This is an echo of an earlier scene in which X expressed exasperation at having done everything right but still keeps getting stuck with a bunch of losers.

Chapter seven contains many of the elements in my chapter eight.

The chapter opens with the protagonist confronting feelings about an old relationship with someone he/she didn’t like but who had something to which he/she aspired.

This person dies in both books, but this is conveyed much later in my book.

We learn that X is not on social media and that this gives him/her a sense of disconnection and superiority. (this was conveyed closer to the beginning of my book)

This is the chapter in which X makes a critical decision that will send him/her on a wild ride.

The chapter ends with a pompous character pontificating at length about an ethical dilemma that is obvious to many people, demonstrating the general obtuseness and character flaws of people in this environment. He is in favor of the unethical solution.

Chapter eight appears similar to my chapter nine.

The chapter opens with X being pursued by a desperate fan/lover who is decidedly unappealing, stupid, and emotionally unregulated.

Despite having members of the opposite sex throwing themselves at X, they are barely registered by X. They are a low priority compared to X’s quest to have a successful career.

X is bored with this new job.

A sense of menace begins to build and it is expressed through the repitition of words that represent sounds. (rip, rip, rip — dum dum tek ah tek)

The chapter ends with a sense of uncertainty about the menace. All eyes are on X.

Chapter nine is similar to my chapter ten.

The chapter opens with