The Latest From AngelaHoy.com

I wasted a great deal of time over the weekend trying to explain to a website owner why what she did was wrong. Like many of these cases I’ve investigated, I believe her intentions weren’t malicious. I think she’s just ignorant.

I was contacted by a writer, Katy Terrega (who publishes a site for writers of erotica), who claimed that a market listing she researched and wrote for Writer’s Digest magazine, and that she retained the rights to, was posted on another website without authorization. This was putting her own readers at a disadvantage because they now had to compete with the readers of the other website to get work from the source of the market listing.

I contacted the website. The owner’s first excuse was that calls for submissions/writer’s guidelines often appear on multiple websites. I gently explained to her the difference between writer’s guidelines and market listings. Writer’s guidelines are written and distributed by publications and companies that hire writers. A market listing is researched and written by the person writing the article or book it will appear in.

At WritersWeekly.com, we research and write each market listing using completed questionnaires received from publishers. We use the publishers’ answers to write the market listings, and then wait for the publishers to approve their respective listings. This is a timely and expensive process as we pay our managing editor, Autumn, to perform this job. But, it ensures our market listings are original and that they can’t be found elsewhere. These paying markets are for WritersWeekly.com readers alone, thus increasing their chances of getting a paying assignment from one of our markets. When someone decides to steal our market listings instead of doing their own research and writing, they’re hurting us and our readers, so we go after them. We also don’t hesitate to investigate people who steal content from other writers.

The publisher above wrote back stating she knew the difference between writer’s guidelines and market listings. Since she kept arguing with me and refused to admit she stole the material, I explained to her that the market listing was absolutely identical, down to every letter, space, period and comma. She finally relented and offered to remove it. However, she then claimed she had permission to publish it. Permission from the writer? No. Permission from Writer’s Digest magazine? No again. She claimed to have obtained permission from the publication that the market listing was about.

I then had to explain to her that, when you write an article about a company, the company does not own the rights to that article. The writer owns the rights, or the publication that ran the article owns the rights.

By this time, I was getting pretty tired of her excuses and, since she skated around the issue and offered so many excuses instead of admitting outright that she copied something from another publication without requesting permission from the author, I started to doubt her integrity as well as her intelligence. And I’m sure, after this headache was over, she regrets taking content that wasn’t hers. She was very angry with the writer for contacting WritersWeekly.com (she should be directing that anger at herself) and claimed she would never refer anyone to Katy’s website ever again. I’m sure Katy won’t mind. By the way, Katy’s book on how to write erotica, including (you guessed it!) paying markets, can be found HERE.

Have you ever wondered if someone has reprinted your material without permission? You can simply copy a sentence or two from one of your articles and paste it into google.com. Be sure to put quotes around the sentences.

Another resource is Turnitin.com (an anti-plagiarism site used by teachers and professors). They offer a free trial service at: http://www.turnitin.com/static/free_trial.html

I received dozens of letters from readers regarding last week’s blog on Term Paper Mills. Everyone agreed with me that high school students who buy term papers will grow up lazy, expecting to be able to buy their way out of anything or to just simply copy someone else’s work and claim it as their own.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the New York Times reporter, Jayson Blair, who managed to deceive the Times with his “reporting.” They claim that 36 of his 73 articles contained incorrect or plagiarized information.

His long stream of deception (laziness?) has been a huge embarrassment for the New York Times that is (was) one of the most respected newspapers in the world.

What I haven’t seen in the press is a mention of where the fact checkers on the paper’s staff were through all of this. The New York Times is blaming the reporter’s personal problems for the publication of “inaccuracies, fraud and plagiarism.” However, the Times should have been checking his facts all along. They are ultimately responsible for ensuring the facts are published in their paper.

In a New York Observer interview, Blair appears cocky about his deeds. He says he “fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism” with his reporting.

Can Blair’s personal problems be blamed for his journalistic blunders? All he really did was make up “facts” and copy information from other publications, claiming it as his own. You know, he sounds just like a term paper mill customer!

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen a vast increase in the number of “job” listings from term paper mills seeking freelance writers. Websites that allow these firms to post ads, and the writers who supply these firms with papers, should be cowering in shame.

What these firms say they do is sell term paper “examples” to high school and college students. But, what we all know is that students don’t buy “examples” of term papers to use as a reference materials. What a joke and an insult to any human being’s intellect! Students either buy the term paper and use it as-is, or they buy the term paper, change a few words around, and turn it in as their own work.

Term paper mills encourage dishonesty and unethical behavior among the writers who write for them, and they encourage cheating and lack of morals and achievement among their student customers.

The students who buy these papers will someday be someone’s doctor (likely botching diagnoses and procedures because they cheated their way through school), someone’s pharmacist (endangering lives by taking the easy way out – not doing their research (homework) and filling prescriptions that may be inaccurate or may not be compatible with other meds the patient is taking), and even someone’s mother (who won’t be able to help Johnny with his homework because she cheated her way through high school or college).

And if you think the cheating stops at buying term papers, think again. If a wayward student feels he can get away with buying fake papers (if a real company is selling them, then it MUST be okay, right?!), he’ll then see how far he can push the system in other ways as well, such as buying and selling tests, lying to authority figures (teachers and parents) and manipulating those around him.

Term paper mills are teaching children to be lazy and dishonest and to willfully and blatantly deceive. They will carry these personality flaws into adulthood and their families, friends and co-workers will be the future victims of this ongoing deceipt.

If you’re writing for one of these horrible firms, you are part of the problem. Perhaps you’ve deluded yourself into believing these operations are legitimate and fulfilling a real “need” among students. Perhaps your delusion extends to the point that it’s “not your problem” and that you’re only trying to make a living. You’re just as guilty as the cheating student and you know it. The only difference is that the student is young and stupid and can’t yet see how his actions are forming his future (anti-social) personality which may someday endanger his marriage, his career or someone’s life, depending on his career choice.

You, as an adult and a professional writer, have no excuses. Writers who write for term paper mills are selling out our industry, their families, themselves, and the students they’re claiming to help.

Would you rather your daughter marry an upstanding citizen who diligently worked his way to the top with honor, or would you rather she marry some louse who enjoys cheating and manipulating the system and everyone around him? The student who is buying your paper today will be someone’s husband and father tomorrow. Think about it.