Monday, March 1, 2010

You're Just Jealous

JK Rowling's got her boxing gloves on again. Well, I guess they're still on.

She's still fighting the estate of Adrian Jacobs over plagiarism charges for his book The Adventures of Willy the Wizard. And I feel really, really bad for her.

This was a nothing book. It sold a few dozen copies when it came out. Harry Potter came out afterwards and they saw it had some similar features. Everyone knows ideas are unique to each individual and it's totally impossible for two people to have similar ideas so OF COURSE JK Rowling stole this dude's ideas. O_o

You know, I'm usually disinclined to using the "you're jealous" argument because 99.9% of the time it's used by really stupid people that can't think up anything smart to argue with. But in this case, it is pure jealousy. Jacobs had a good idea for a book about a boy wizard. The waves of publishing weren't right for him and the book flopped. Rowling comes along and has a similar idea but the tides were in her favor and the pieces fell nicely into place.

Of course there's going to be jealousy. Anyone's going to be jealous of something like that but to try and claim plagiarism in an attempt to reap some benefits from a book that drove yours even further into the ground? It's just pathetic.

Admit defeat, you feeble estate. You're not going to win this one. If it was a nominal book with decent circulation, you might have had a chance. But considering it was as good as self-published, you're going down. Get some therapy and get over it. You got ninja'd on the boy wizard idea. It isn't the first time its happened and it won't be the last. Such is the animal of publishing.

6 comments:

Steph Su said...

Even if the dude loses, he wins. Because these lawsuits are all about publicity for the small-minded, jealous part instigating them. I remember last year some idiot tried to do that with Stephenie Meyer, claiming that SHE (the small-time, idiot author) had done the idea of a human girl losing her virginity to her vampire husband. Or something like that. Whatever. This is so lame.

in which a girl reads said...

OH HECK NOES.

For some reason I'm really, really offended by this. Maybe it's because I'm a huge HP fan, but still. Harry Potter rules.

The individual ideas in HP (The Chosen one, wizards, magic, evil villain, etc) are not original. It's the way J.K. Rowling put them together that is truly marvelous.

I don't really see plagiarism in the book world so much as having similar ideas (because so many books have similar ideas--and hey, Eragon--total ripoff that it is, seems to be getting away with it). I think it's more the individual words, etc. that can be plagiarized.

And you're so right about the jealously part.

Rebecca Herman said...

It sounds like the author of the other book died the year the first Harry Potter book was published... so I doubt he could be jealous.... so not sure why the estate would continue such a stupid lawsuit at this point?

Donna (Bites) said...

It sounds like the estate is jealous on his behalf. Kind of sad, really.

DarkWyrm reads... said...

I agree with you, Donna. The 'tides' of the publishing world are fickle and timing is just as important as story. The timing was just off in that first case.

I agree with Steph Su too. This legal battle is providing publicity for that old book and it could get an extra 15 minutes of fame out of the deal.

Lauren said...

I have to wholeheartedly agree with you here that whoever is driving this should just let it go. I mean, I feel bad for people when their dreams don't work out, but what good does this do? Also, I remember reading The Worst Witch series as a kid, about a girl who goes to boarding school to learn to be a witch... There's quite possibly similarites between that idea and HP or the Willy The Wizard book, but you don't catch that author deciding to sue anyone. Because it's ridiculous.

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