Some thoughts on plagiarism

Our genre is regularly affected by cases of plagiarism and the latest ones are nothing new. I'll lay my cards on the table - plagiarism is theft of the worst sort, because it resembles identity theft. An author is defined by their words and their voice, so to take that and call it your own is to steal the author's essence.

However, I do wonder if we're making a situation where authors will be more tempted to cut corners. For example, if you had a mainstream contract for twelve books, they'd probably be published six to twelve months apart, so the series would spread over six to twelve years. In our genre the gap between books would likely be much shorter for an entirely new (as opposed to reprinted) set of works. Twelve years would be seen as too long. That puts huge pressures on quality of production. No excuse for 'cheating' but...

Just a thought to put into the mix.