Thursday, July 3, 2008

Amazon.com Judy Bolton Editorial Reviews

I guess I'm an Amazon.com editor, and I didn't even know it. I was browsing the Judy Bolton Applewood listings on Amazon for the softcover editions that are soon to be released. Upon reading the product description of one of them, I said to myself, "That sounds like something I wrote." I looked at another and felt the same way.

I couldn't be certain without visiting my site, so I went to my website to check my summaries. The summaries of #30 through #38 that are on my site were taken from the original Grosset and Dunlap books, so I did not write those. This fact is stated on my site as one should never pass off another person's words as one's own. I did write all of the summaries for #1-29, and at least some of those summaries are in the listings on Amazon.com.

Upon checking, they used parts of my summary for #2 and most of #4. They used part of #3 but mangled it. They used part of #21. It looks like they used the entire summary for each of #10, 14, 26, and 27. Some of the books on Amazon do not have a summary at all. They'll probably put them up eventually, and I bet I can guess where they're going to get them!

It is kind of weird.

2 comments:

Jenn Fisher said...

That happens to me ALL the time with my NancY Drew Sleuth website:) Sometimes I'm irritated, sometimes not, but most times I am irritated if it's really blatant copying. I think it's a shame that if people can't take the time to write it themselves, they can't do a simple citation.

Jenn:)
http://www.nancydrewsleuth.com

Judy said...

How rude! I thought Amazon prohibits that, but of course I could be wrong.