So, in the course my random ramblings, I stumbled across this annoying story. Basically, an author lifted work wholesale from other writers, incorporated it into her own book, and pushed it out for sale via Amazon’s self-publishing software. That’s not the worst of it; right after it happened, the author claimed that she had–get this–a ghostwriter because she couldn’t write, and the ghostwriter had been the one to steal the material.
Pretty pathetic.
The Flint Hatchet 
Story Theft
I’m just amazed that anyone would bother doing this (plagiarizing another aspiring writer’s work), especially from a fanfict site, and indy publishing it as their own. Even if something is quite good, its chances of making more than lunch money as an independently published story on Amazon or Smashwords or whatever is on par with winning the lottery.
Having said this, I completely agree that Amazon etc. could easily use anti plagiarism software, though it would only catch stories that are published and searchable on the web already, and not stories stolen from password protected share your work forums on writer’s sites etc.
There is a small but real fear that someone on such a site could, out of sheer spitefulness, take a story or section of a novel someone has been working on and getting crits for, post or publish it somewhere on the web, and ruin the original author’s chances of submitting it to a paying market as an original work (since they typically want first publication rights). It’s not terribly likely, but say someone wanted to get revenge for bad crits or a forum war or something?
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Re: Story Theft
There is that potential, yes. I think it is small but something for which we all must be vigilant.
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