Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was such a favorite of mine that I have been buying most all new versions of it (and sequels) I can find.. One I refused to read was: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre. I really thought that was just too insulting to Austen's original..
It is easy to understand why a new version requires much of the original dialogue at times. I recently ordered a book whose title I did not own though I had read that author before and liked her. When the book arrived, I eagerly started to read it and wondered at its familiarity. Since I often read the few pages Amazon provides, to review, I hoped that was what I was remembering. However, it became just too many pages. Having liked the original, Impulse and Initiative, I read, on as I frequently like to relax re-reading when I know I don't have to worry through the suspense. I thought I had missed something when it didn't seem to be as I remembered it. My count of such books is currently 82 so I read on, thinking that I must have skipped what I was now missing.
Nevertheless, being obstinate, I compared the books paragraph for paragraph for several chapters. The author had changed 'knocked' to 'rap' in a later version and a few words here or there were slightly different though the meaning and general story stayed the same. However, the new version, To Conquer Mr. Darcy was not easily associated by me with Impulse and Initiative. In the newer version, the paperback, the author had left out a whole sub-plot which made Caroline Bingley a worse conniving villain than her usual cattiness and attempt to disparage Elizabeth. It didn't essentially change the story, it simply removed a piece of it.However, it made me wonder. What are the rules of selling a book without telling the reader beforehand that it is simply a rewrite of a previously published book with little change? I don't know what publisher's rules are but I can certainly comment on the view as a reader. The seller should make it possible for me know if I might already have bought a copy of this book. Before I buy, I check my database to see if I already own it. When I don't see it there, I read the blurbs the seller has on the book. Having done this, there was nothing to connect the two since most of the sequels have the same characters and many don't deviate that far from the basic premise of the original Pride and Prejudice. Only when I received the book, read it, and checked the very fine print on the bottom of the Copyright page did I learn it had previously been published in 2008 by Sourcebooks Landmark as Impulse and Initiative. Amazon showed it as a 2010 book.
Addenda from Yiayia...Apparently readers failed to see my 'tongue in cheek' use of the world plagiarize. Obviously one cannot plagiarize one's own work and I publicly apologize to authors who may have taken misunderstood and taken offense.
5 comments:
I'm sorry you ended up with two copies of the same book, but I have to differentiate between plagiarism and title changes. Publishers have the right to reissue books under new titles even over author objections, and in fact I objected strongly to the fact that they would not agree to put the original title on the cover as well. I can understand your frustration, but can only encourage you to take it up with my publisher, Sourcebooks, which has reissued many Austen-related books under new titles. It has understandably alienated many readers.
I've addressed this question frequently, trying to inform readers about my title changes. I've discussed it several times in my blog (http://austeninterlude.org/blogs/index.php/abigail/2010/06/04/title-change-summary), and there's a multi-author discussion on this problem on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=278104322791#!/topic.php?uid=278104322791&topic=13286. I've posted on Amazon about the title changes, and my personal website is currently being redone to make the title changes more prominent. I realize that even with all this, many readers end up with a book they don't want, but unfortunately it's all I can do.
I hope you will take this up with Sourcebooks. Perhaps hearing from readers will make more of an impression on them.
Like Abigail, I have had two books already reissued from self published editions to ones by a regular publisher, which made a title change. A third one will arrive in the spring. We do everything we can to inform our readers (websites, blogs, etc.), but often we are overruled. I have stopped the Print on Demand publisher from selling the books, but some may be sitting in a warehouse and sold despite my doing all I can to see that this is not the case. There is no copyright on book titles, and publishers will change a title for "sales" purposes. My Darcy's Dreams (so titled because of the many dream sequences in the book) became Darcy's Temptation because the publisher thought the word "temptation" had more appeal to the buying public. Online distributers are the biggest culprits in this process as they will often display the books side by side on the page.
Although we hate that some readers are "misled" by the repackaging, we authors have no control over the marketing in that manner. What should we do? Should we tell a publisher it cannot publish the book? Should we let our dreams of finding a legitimate publisher in a crazy publishing market go because of the title? So many people face rejection letter after rejection letter and pray for being published. We all agree: It is not fair to the reader. But we should also agree that it is not fair to the author to be chastised for something out of his control. Take Abigail's advice. Send your complaints to the publishers. Be the "voice" that expresses the concern for this practice. We say it all the time. I do. I know Ms. Reynolds does. She and I have had this conversation several times already.
I, too, have gone the route from self-published with one title, to published by a 'real' publisher who chose to give it another title. I think for those of us who have written and titled the book, it was difficult to have it changed, but the publisher ultimately has the final say. We do everything we can, but obviously that is not always enough. We know that our readers will not be happy about it, so it is not something we dismiss lightly. Since most people buy from amazon, I will use that as an example. Amazon doesn't know that the new book is the same as another book they sold. Different title, different isbn, how could they? It would have to be up to the publisher to print something in the synopsis, but so far they have not. For my next book coming out in the spring, they did say 'originally self-published with over so many copies sold.' But they did not mention the previous title. I posted a note on my author page there as well as on the discussion page for the new book, because the book actually went up for pre-sales before there was any synopsis at all. That concerned me. I hope that you and other readers will have a little mercy on the authors, who are definitely not trying to pull a fast one. We even have a little sentimentality with our original titles and I think we all wish our books could have kept the one we had given it.
I agree with all the above authors. When Sourcebooks purchased my book "And This Our Life: Chronicles of the Darcy Family" they wanted it revised and renamed it "Mr. Darcy's Little Sister." I prefer the more literary title (which is a quote from Shakespeare). However, I must take exception to your use of "plagiarizing" in your title. Plagiarism is "the theft of the ideas or writings of another and use of them as your own". Clearly, someone cannot steal their own work and to accuse a writer of plagiarism in a public forum is libel. Please consider changing to a more correct term (but if you do not, please spell plagiarizing correctly)
Yiayia, I will not reiterate what my fellow authors have fully explained in regards to the problem of our novels undergoing title changes. We feel your pain to a much higher degree since we suffer the brunt of nasty emails, negative reviews and bad ratings, and bloggers accusing us of the punishable crime of plagiarism all for something that is utterly beyond our control. Frankly I think that is far worse than a buyer spending a few dollars and re-reading a book!
I will chime in adamantly on C. Allyn's point. Re-issuing and editing a novel we have wrote and own the copyright to is not only a practice that has gone on for as long as books have been published but isn't even remotely plagiarism. To use a term such as that, forever linking it to an author's name - in this case Abigail Reyolds - is unconscionable.
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