Three Dangerous Tipping Points for Today’s Writers: Part I-The Adventures of Ripov McHack on Brazilian Jungle River
A three-part Substack on vital issues facing writers today: the stranglehold of a certain online bookseller; why the WGA strike is a fight for survival; and looming dangers of AI expansion.
As a youth my head filled with ethereal notions of being “a great writer.” Dreaming of literary glory in the height of my pretentious high school fashion, I was puzzled when I first heard about writers’ unions. Unions? Wasn’t that the domain of carpenters or construction workers? Plumbers? Brick layers? Writers were artists. You can unionize manual labor, but art? Never! Sure, I loved the union songs of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie (still do) but even so. Unionizing the art of writing would destroy the purity of my literary soul.
In other words, I was a snotty and naive kid who needed to pull my head out of the clouds (or better yet: my tushie).
Rejection as a way of life
Writers are united in our devotion to crafting nothing less than best work we can for our readers. We are peers in every discipline, be it authors, journalists, bloggers, playwrights, screen and television writers, public relations writers, marketing, and advertising writers, and so much more. Writers need unions. We need to stick together.
Some things are inevitable, the kind of stuff that unions can’t protect. That’s understandable. It’s a tough world out there and not everyone will like the way you put words together. Our submissions are ignored and rejected, a part of the writing game that we all accept. Rejections are discouraging, to be sure, but a reality in our world. People aren’t always going to like what we write. We get dismissed in all sorts of ways.
I once received a rejection letter which read “you are an amateur who writes like a professional.” There was no elaboration to this wisdom. I was tempted to write back “and you are a professional who responds like an amateur,” but thought better of it. Then there’s the more standard rejection: “I love your work, it’s great, it needs to be published, and sorry, not right for me.” Every writer I know has gotten a variation on that one. It’s an exercise in frustration.
The horror…the horror…
Add to these, our distinctive encounters with the unexpected, i.e., our horror stories. One author I know was ghostwriting the memoir of respected New Jersey business executive. As part of the assignment, she reported to Mr. Smith, the business executive’s best friend who served as a go-between for the business executive and the author. The author’s salary was arranged and paid for by Mr. Smith via his company, a successful olive oil importing business. A few months into the project, the author learned that Mr. Smith had personal connections to well-known names within the New Jersey branch of the WhattaYaLookinAt Businessmen’s League. In fact, Mr. Smith had once played a role in the dismissal of another member of the WhattaYaLookinAt Businessmen’s League. When a Grand Jury asked Mr. Smith about his role in this dismissal, Mr. Smith said “whattayalookinat?” and refused to testify. This was widely known at the time, and many years previous to when my friend went on Mr. Smith’s payroll. Even if she saw the story on the news or read it in the newspaper, she wouldn’t have remembered the names of the principles involved. Hers was an oversight anyone might make.
To say the very least, my friend wanted out of the project. Watching Goodfellas or The Godfather a few hundred times is one thing: unknowingly being paid by a member of the WhattaYaLookinAt Businessmen’s League is something else. She didn’t know what to do, plus she was furious with the business executive for not letting her know Mr. Smith’s background. Besides, what was a well-known and respected business executive doing hanging around with a member of the WhattaYaLookinAt Businessmen’s League, one with questionable actions in the dismissal of another member of the Organization?
Fortunately, the project came to a crashing end when her business executive client got entangled in a public scandal worthy of the HBO series Succession. My friend was released from her contract and didn’t have to return any of her salary. Although I’ve changed some details to protect my friend and obscure her client’s identity, the basics of this story as I’ve related them are true.
Not all writer war stories are so darkly amusing. Writers are routinely abused by cutthroats and backstabbers whose ethics are akin to members of the WhattaYaLookinAt Businessmen’s League. It’s appalling. How appalling?
Read on.
Arthoro S. Hardwerking: meet Ripov McHack
There’s a writer I know—we’ll call him Arthoro S. Hardwerking—who penned a book recounting a horrific mass murder by a psychopathic killer. This crime remains the deadliest of its kind in American history. (Again, I’m being cagey so as not to identify Arthoro S. Hardwerking.) This book was a definite work, bolstered by deep research into old newspapers, historic archives, legal documents, and photographs. Arthoro S. Hardwerking conducted interviews with relatives of the crime’s victims. He even had the fortunate privilege of meeting a few survivors of this crime, people who were in their 90s.The horror of that mass murder remained close in their memory throughout the decades. Loved ones ripped of life were not forgotten.
The book was praised by reviewers and readers, won a significant award, and most importantly of all, was admired by the survivors themselves. Arthoro S. Hardwerking developed close friendships with the people he met over the course of writing the book, and in the many years since it was published.
Arthoro S. Hardwerking wouldn’t say such things to brag or toot his proverbial horn. Granted, Arthoro S. Hardwerking has a massive ego and can be a real jerk when he wants to be, which is 24/7. But when it comes to this book he takes enormous pride. He’s also protective of the people he wrote about. To be the caretaker of their memories was a humbling job, one that drew out unexpected emotions from Arthoro S. Hardwerking, things he never realized were inside him.
So, you can imagine Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s ire when he discovered his book had been used and abused by a cheap hack looking to make some quick coin exploiting the victims of this same mass murder.
Ripov McHack: Master of cut-and-paste exploitation of other people’s pain
A few years after Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s book came out, he learned that another writer was working on a book about the same story. Well, that’s fair. History is public domain. Everyone is entitled to write books about the past. But Arthoro S. Hardwerking grew concerned when he learned that this new book was the product of a guy we’ll call Ripov McHack (name changed to avoid lawsuits). Ripov McHack’s oeuvre was true crime. His books had a well-deserved reputation for sleazy purple prose that reveled in the bloody work of murderers, while giving short shrift to their victims. The titles of Ripov McHack’s books screamed of lurid exploitation: Crazed Co-Worker, Insanity in Indianapolis, Montana Monster, and Schizoid Schemer. Again, I’ve changed the titles, but they aren’t that far off from the spirit of their real names. Furthermore, the crimes and criminals Ripov McHack wrote about were better dealt with in other books by authors who had genuine sensitivity for the victims.
Arthoro S. Hardwerking had a bad feeling when he heard that Ripov McHack was now writing about this devastating mass murder. Those instincts were spot on. Ripov McHack’s book dove headlong into the sensational. It was clear Ripov McHack hadn’t done much research nor even cared about the actual crime. A couple of chapters focused on an international event that happened days after the mass killing. This event, while a groundbreaking moment in history, had no relation whatsoever to the victims of this murder nor its perpetrator. Those two chapters read for what they were: padding to fill the pages. The bibliography in this book was limited to some newspapers, various historical and legal records, as well as a few history books about the crime, including the one penned by Arthoro S. Hardwerking. Ripov McHack didn’t interview anyone with personal links to the story. He didn’t even bother to contact anyone affected by the crime or their families to let them know what he was doing. The resulting book, Slaughter!, was just another paycheck in Ripov McHack’s career. Bank the advance, spend the royalties, then move on to the next sensational killer. Never mind the victims.
This was what Arthoro S. Hardwerking expected from Ripov McHack. Parts of Slaughter! were filled with well-written perceptions. Why was there such good writing found amidst Ripov McHack’s expected stylistic sleaze? You know the answer. These sentences were lifted from Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s original work, plunked into Ripov McHack’s gutter writing, and cited with endnotes.
These weren’t just snippets from Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s original work. A whole lot of Ripov McHack’s sentences began with words like the, so, consequently, and suddenly. After these sparse line openers Ripov McHack let Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s prose do the heavy lifting. Throughout the book Ripov McHack provided articles and prepositions to introduce predicates written Arthoro S. Hardwerking. Other pages in Slaughter! used whole paragraphs from Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s book to provide descriptions of the story’s bigger picture. Again, this source was cited in the endnotes but that’s no excuse for using large sections of another writer’s work.
There were a few moments within Slaughter! were Ripov McHack did acknowledge his predecessor, referring to him as “historian Arthoro S. Hardwerking.” Again, this was mere introduction to a fully quoted sentence crafted by “historian Arthoro S. Hardwerking” That was it as far as recognizing Arthoro S. Hardwerking by name in Slaughter! A second reference didn’t use Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s name, instead calling him “a chronicler” of the story.
Despite his dependence of Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s prose, Ripov McHack also took a slam at his unwitting cowriter, using an Arthoro S. Hardwerking sentence to claim there was a “wildly exaggerated” interpretation by an unnamed author in discussing the killer’s childhood . Ripov McHack didn’t agree with what Arthoro S. Hardwerking wrote, but he liked it enough to throw the whole sentence into the mix.
Three guesses as to what Ripov McHack did next, and the first two guesses don’t count.
You got it right on the first guess: Ripov McHack plagiarized Arthoro S. Hardwerking. It was simple matter of Ripov McHack removing one word from an Arthoro S. Hardwerking sentence, then incorporating the remainder into a Ripov McHack paragraph.
Arthoro S. Hardwerking was justifiably angry. Ripov McHack cut and pasted what he wanted from the Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s book without bothering to summarize or rewrite—something any good nonfiction writer does as a matter of course. Arthoro S. Hardwerking contacted his publisher. They were equally outraged and consulted a legal team well versed in the nuances of copyright law. Within the rules of copyright, there’s something called fair use, in which it’s acceptable to quote a short excerpt from someone else’s work. Certainly Arthoro S. Hardwerking has done this, just like every other historian or nonfiction writer. But when it comes to fair use, you need to limit yourself. Quoting too many sentences from someone else’s work, let alone lifting whole paragraphs or plagiarizing, is known as copyright infringement. It’s akin to one author stealing the work of another. That exactly what Ripov McHack did. He plundered the sentences of Arthoro S. Hardwerking, then stuck them into Slaughter! on an as-needed basis.
How did Ripov McHack get away with this? Under the fair use clause of copyright law Ripov McHack had the right to quote Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s book. However, the copyright lawyers concluded that Ripov McHack went to the very edge of fair use, right up to a brazen eye-blink of where copyright infringement begins. As a result, the publisher’s attorneys had limited options in their advice.
Arthoro S. Hardwerking could write a cease-and-desist letter to Ripov McHack and his publisher, but undoubtedly this would be ignored. The attorneys agreed that Arthoro S. Hardwerking had enough grounds to sue Ripov McHack for copyright infringement. However, a lawsuit would inevitably turn into a high-priced legal gamble, one that could easily suck Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s bank account dry via motions, continuations, lawyer fees, and so much more. Arthoro S. Hardwerking was in the right, but any courtroom victory would surely be subject to appeal. The case could drag on for years. And what if the judge overseeing the proceedings didn’t think Ripov McHack’s work met the standards of copyright infringement? Arthoro S. Hardwerking might win or might lose. Either outcome would result in bankruptcy.
There was third option: eat it. Ripov McHack’s book was produced by the publishing division of a major online bookseller. Let’s call that entity “Brazilian Jungle River.” Via their mighty online sales platform, Brazilian Jungle River racks up more than half of all books sold in the United States. If Arthoro S. Hardwerking wrote an angry letter or filed a lawsuit, Brazilian Jungle River could make it difficult to buy anything written by Arthoro S. Hardwerking or any books produced by his publisher.
There was precedent for this. Just a few years earlier Brazilian Jungle River was sued by Big NY Publishing Company. Big NY Publishing Company didn’t like Brazilian Jungle River’s monopoly on eBooks nor how Brazilian Jungle River manipulated eBook prices. In the wake of this lawsuit, all books written by Big NY Publishing Company’s authors went missing from Brazilian Jungle River’s sales platform. Given that Brazilian Jungle River has a stranglehold on bookselling and book pricing, their underhanded move cut into Big NY Publishing Company’s profits. Eventually the two entities came to an agreement, but not without some blood drawn by the piranhas who run Brazilian Jungle River.
If Brazilian Jungle River used their corporate might to jack around Big NY Publishing Company, they’d have no issues pulling a similar move on Arthoro S. Hardwerking. The third option was the only option. Arthoro S. Hardwerking swallowed hard. Infuriating as it was, doing nothing was Arthoro S. Hardwerking’s only choice.
Ripov McHack got away with his theft. Most likely he’ll do it again. There’s a lot to be said about Big Jungle River, its corporate ethics, and how writers within their publishing wing operate in a laissez-faire school of authorship. None of it is good.
Postscript: That tussle between Brazilian Jungle River and Big NY Publishing Company was in 2014. Eight years later another lawsuit was filed against Brazilian Jungle River when they engaged in a new and equally unprincipled attempt to monopolize the eBook market. This time Big NY Publishing Company and a few of their corporate peers colluded with Brazilian Jungle River to fix eBook prices. Publishing is a racket, and the worst racket there is. Al Capone is an honest businessman in comparison.
Next time: Why is the Writers Guild of America is on strike? Because writers deserve a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. That’s why.
What are your horror stories within the writing game? Have you ever had your work stolen and/or plagiarized or even worse? What about your experiences with Brazilian Jungle River? Or even the Whattayalookinat Businessmen’s League? Share your experiences in the comment section or on my Twitter @realarnieb. And check out my website www.arniebernstein.com.
These links to the U.S. Copyright office provide a good overview of many issues discussed in this column.