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Publisher spurns Kaavya's apology
Published on Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 13:41, Updated at Thu, Apr 27, 2006 in Entertainment section
Tags: Opal Mehta, Kaavya Vishwanathan , New York
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New York: The controversy over alleged plagiarism by Indian American author Kaavya Viswanathan is now getting serious.
The publisher of Megan McCafferty's books, from which Kaavya agrees she may have taken material, refused to buy the young author's explanation or apology.
A day after Kaavya Viswanathan told The New York Times in an email that she had borrowed language from two books by Megan McCafferty but that was "unintentional and unconscious", McCafferty's publishers, Crown, an imprint of Random House, rejected the explanation.
In an emailed statement to CNN-IBN, Senior Vice President & Publisher, Crown Publishers and Three Rivers Press, Steve Ross said:
"We find both the responses of Little, Brown and their author Kaavya Viswanathan deeply troubling and disingenuous. Ms Viswanathan's claim that similarities in her phrasing were "unconscious" or "unintentional" is suspect. We have documented more than forty passages from Kaavya Viswanathan's recent publication How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life that contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure from Megan McCafferty's first two books, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. This extensive taking from Ms McCafferty's books is nothing less than an act of literary identity theft."
There are more questions over Viswanathan's writing. The copyright to Opal Mehta is held jointly by the author and Alloy Marketing, a firm that packages so-called chick-lit books.
The Boston Globe has quoted an executive of Alloy Marketing saying: "We helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book."
In response to a query, Alloy's spokesperson Jodi Smith told CNN-IBN:
"Alloy works with the author to develop the concept and the book's plot but does not write the content."
On Tuesday, Crown accused Kaavya Vishwanathan of an "act of literary identity theft" further deepening the controversy surrounding her book.
Viswanathan, a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, was just 17 when she signed a reported six-figure, two-book deal with Little Brown.
Her novel was released in March to widespread publicity. DreamWorks has already acquired film rights.
But readers of McCafferty who had read Viswanathan spotted similarities to McCafferty's books, which include Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings and alerted McCafferty, who in turn notified her publisher.
Excerpts of the questionable passages were published Sunday on the Website of the Harvard Crimson.
Viswanathan issued a statement Monday apologising for her 'borrowings', saying that she was a "huge fan" of McCafferty and "wasn't aware of how much I may have
internalized Ms McCafferty's words."
She promised to revise her book, a process Little, Brown says has already started.
Ironically, in a recent interview with The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Viswanathan was asked about books that might have influenced her novel.
"Nothing I read gave me the inspiration," she had responded.
Little Brown gave Viswanathan's novel a first printing of 100,000, the publisher said.
According to Crown, McCafferty's books have more than 400,000 copies in print. Her third novel, Charmed Thirds, was released two weeks ago.
"This has been an enormous distraction for Megan," Ross said. "It's been a very, very difficult and devastating couple of weeks for her."
(With inputs from Associated Press)
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