Teen Plagiarist Sacked

I was going to post on this a while back but decided to let the story play out. It seems, indeed, to have finally met its slow and painful end.

Teen plagiarist Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University Sophomore, will have her novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life pulled from the shelves of the Nation's bookstores after admitting to lifting portions of her story from another author. The novelist reportedly had a six figure deal which included the release of other novels over time.

It's too bad the incident got as ugly as it did with Viswanathan reduced to tear filled apology after tear filled apology in effort to save her writing contract. But fair is fair and if she cheated by plagiarism to get the deal then having her book yanked is just.

The biggest lesson is the one left for publishers: stop printing junk. If the editors and publishers at Crown were on their toes, the book should never have been sent to press for its similarity in the first place.

If they were really on top of their game, they wouldn't publish such dreadful stories at all.