Kaavya Viswanathan and the Novel of Doom

Several different online discussion groups I follow have recently glommed onto KaavyaGate, the scandal wherein Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan's first novel has been yanked by publisher Little, Brown in the wake of growing accusations that the novel borrows passages from a number of other books of varying degrees of similarity.

It's a juicy story, to be sure, but my own sense is that the plagiarism charges have distracted the media from the aspect of the case that should be of more interest to authors. Much of the coverage mentions the involvement of 17th Street Productions, a book packaging firm, with the gestation of Ms. Viswanathan's novel -- but a careful look at the apparent sequence of events suggests that "packaging" isn't an accurate description of the role 17th Street (now part of Alloy Entertainment) had in the book's creation.

( What actually seems to have happened -- some of the details are a trifle vague -- is this: )

Kaavya Viswanathan and the Novel of Doom

Several different online discussion groups I follow have recently glommed onto KaavyaGate, the scandal wherein Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan's first novel has been yanked by publisher Little, Brown in the wake of growing accusations that the novel borrows passages from a number of other books of varying degrees of similarity.

It's a juicy story, to be sure, but my own sense is that the plagiarism charges have distracted the media from the aspect of the case that should be of more interest to authors. Much of the coverage mentions the involvement of 17th Street Productions, a book packaging firm, with the gestation of Ms. Viswanathan's novel -- but a careful look at the apparent sequence of events suggests that "packaging" isn't an accurate description of the role 17th Street (now part of Alloy Entertainment) had in the book's creation.

( What actually seems to have happened -- some of the details are a trifle vague -- is this: )