I am honestly trying to decide how to feel about a business practice I’ve heard of recently: writers (often erotica writers) who file the serial numbers off their earlier published work, re-do it slightly if at all, and publish it as new fiction under another title (and often a new pen name). It’s called mirroring or flipping, and apparently a lot of writers employ it to build backlists.
I think there are several levels of culpability here.
Much as I rolled my eyes at E. L. James and Cassandra Clare for altering fan fiction enough to call it original, I can’t fault their impulse. If the concept can be peeled away from its fandom characters and situations, it’s a strong enough story to stand on its own. I’m considering doing that to one of my old fan fiction series. I’m sure the new version will be wildly different than the pieces I wrote over a decade ago. At the very least, I won’t get away with fade-to-black on the sex scenes.
Then come the self-published authors who mine their earlier work for refurbished product. In many cases they’re gleefully open and unapologetic about it.
Look at some sample author comments from a Reddit discussion on the subject:
“I’ve done a couple gay stories where I just changed the characters’ names and a few details. Like one was about football jocks, I switched it to basketball and it actually sells much better than the original.”
“Sometimes [I’ve changed] nothing but the names. On occasion, I’ve taken two stories and mashed them together. I’ve also taken half of a story and written a new exposition for it.”
Others didn’t feel at all like ‘sleazeballs’ for cosmetically altering books to cash in on reader requests for new kinks.
It’s their choice in the end, and their readers’ choice to tolerate it. I think a lot of mirroring is strongly linked to the ability of e-book writers to more easily change and update versions than print writers. Because they can do it, it becomes a fall-back response.
The group I cannot understand: authors taking commercially published work that is still under contract, changing things around enough to hide the origin, and either self-publishing it or sending it to a new publisher under a new name. And then boasting about it online.
It’s one thing to wait until the book is off contract and legally available for re-publication. Genre writers have been doing that for at least a century. Writers have also been mining recurring themes for years. (For a while, Tanith Lee had a tendency to write chariot races into her fantasy stories. It was a hoot, wondering where she’d put the next Ben-Hur homage in a book.)
But writing too-close a copy while the book is under contract, even if it’s making no sales at an underwhelming publisher? The author should probably have researched that publisher a little better, or at least tried to do something a little more ‘new’.
I’ve seen almost the same phenomenon in the art industry.
In the cutthroat world of home decor art, most companies have made an art form of how close they can skate to provable plagiarism of competitors’ works. At the same time, they try to lock down their own artists with non-compete contracts to discourage moonlighting.
Fine artists have always indulged in themes and thematically linked multiple pieces. It’s fun to fully explore a concept’s range. And grouped multiples usually sell better than similar standalone pieces.
As for style? Here’s a little-known secret of the commercial decor trade: almost any style can be learned. Thanks to my ten years in the trenches, I know how to look at a group of one artist’s 8″ x 10″ glossies or actual paintings in any of two or three dozen currently popular styles – and analyze it layer by layer until I can recreate original works in that same vein. I’m not forging anything. It’s not quite plagiarism unless I stray too close to the original artist’s specific pieces, but it has startled some gallery owners before.
Just because I can do it, doesn’t mean I should. And it breaks my heart, because I actually like some of my ‘takes’ on other artists’ styles more than their original works. But I was appalled when cheap and unscrupulous designers blithely asked me to copy artists line-for-line. I won’t do that to my compatriots. I therefore learn and apply what I can, without being too jarringly obvious.
Why do I instinctively shrug and say ‘Whatever’ to one group of writing or art recyclers, and feel righteous indignation toward another?
I think it’s a matter of authorial intent. An original author waiting to get rights back on something (before making a new version) is not doing anything wrong.
A fan fiction author clever enough to pull something original out of the tangles of fandom is just being inventive and thrifty.
A self-published author recycling their own stories in new guises, merely to build a catalog, is being shady and cynical, but not really criminal. That tends to be revealed in angry reader reviews, eventually.
An author laundering a contracted story for material they can either self-pub or send to a new publisher…is being stupid as well as lazy. If their first publisher catches them at it, goodbye all future contracts and hello to possible lawsuits and industry blacklists. I know artists who do this, and they think the risk of being caught is worth it.
I draw this parallel between some home decor art and certain kinds of erotic fiction: many of the creators see their work as formulaic and efficient to produce. They don’t want to invest in a lot of extra effort. In many cases, their clients and readers may not see the problem. Who cares, when the point is to get more ‘new’ product out there, and let the older stuff slide into the long tail of the market? With enough work available, even one or two sales a month can add up.
In some cases I see this tactic being used by authors who are leaving commercial publishing for self-publishing. They somehow believe that by grabbing old work and recycling it, they are ‘sticking it to the man’.
But alert people will notice, and they will talk.