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The alert and avid readers over at the Quality Reads UK Book Club discovered another word thief this week. Good eye, Folks! Have a round on me!

Misty Wright likes to take other people’s novels, change a few names and self publish through a vanity outfit called iVisonary Media. They seem to be proud of the fact that they publish her. Good for them. I think it’s like being the tailor of Al Capone’s suits or the company that manufactured Jeffrey Dahmer’s cookware.

Author Jennifer Cloud has compiled a nice chunk of proof that her novel, Crying Blood has been turned into Assassin’s Love and is currently for sale on Amazon. Misty’s gotten herself (and Jennnifer) sixteen 4 and 5 star reviews, but it also  means she’s making a little bit of money. She’s also stolen works from Mark Stewart and Leitha Wards, so this clearly isn’t her first rodeo.

If this were only about money most people would just poo-poo it away, but it’s not. It’s not about an idea that someone turned into a bestseller or sold to a  studio to be made into a movie.  Plagiarism is like stealing someone’s kid from off the playground and raising that child as your own, taking credit when he cures cancer, and living in a nice house bought with the Nobel Prize money.

What’s weird is she could have published these for free through Kindle or Smashwords, but she *paid* to steal other novels. *facepalm*

Looks like the new breed of plagiarists is going after self-published authors who don’t have as much exposure, hoping their fanbase and a few free downloads would increase name recognition, however there are far too many book clubs out there with nice long memories acting as a first line of defense. If I wore hats, I’d take mine off to the book clubs.

I’m too tired to dig deeper this evening (morning) but keep an eye out. Three of Misty’s five books belong to someone else. Chances are, she didn’t write the other two either.

Here’s her blog. While I would never advocate harrassing someone on the internet, she might be happy to know she no longer had to keep her terrible secret.