Opinions: Plagiarising Book Reviews is Weird

So there I am, idly browsing Twitter, when I see an author happily tweeting some positive reviews of his latest book, delighted to know that readers have been digging it. “Cool,” I think, “I enjoyed that one. let’s see what other people are saying about it.” I flick through screenshots of Audible reviews, then stop, puzzled. “Am I going mad?” I wonder. I keep scrolling. “Hey, thanks for sharing my review,” one Tweeter gushes in the replies. Scratching my head, I open Goodreads and check the review I wrote a few days earlier. I flip back to Twitter, and yep. That’s my review, copied word for word into Audible by someone else, who’s brazenly taking credit for it.

This was the situation I found myself in a few days back, having accidentally discovered that I was the victim of book review plagiarism. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write, I can tell you! Now, I’m not a professional book reviewer. I don’t make money from writing about books, and I’m not even offended that someone decided to rip off a few words that I wrote and claim them as his own (especially as it really was just a few quick words on Goodreads). It all seems quite amusing really, but I’m just…a bit puzzled, you know? I mean, what’s the point? I made it clear in my review that I enjoyed this book – Assassinorum: Kingmaker by Robert Rath – and this guy has given the book five stars on Audible, so presumably he enjoyed it too. So what does he gain by posting a pilfered review?

Here’s a comparison of the two – my Goodreads review on the left, Henry’s Audible ‘review’ on the right

A couple of weeks later and I’m none the wiser, but I figure it was an interesting experience and worth writing about. Because you see, the plot thickens. Shortly after discovering it, I sent a link to the plagiareview to a friend of mine, and for all that I find it kind of amusing, he took it pretty seriously. Being both a good friend and (apparently) a talented online investigator, he quickly identified another instance of one of my reviews being piratically passed off as this guy’s work. I’m not going to publicly out him but it would be easier to call him something other than ‘this guy’, so let’s call him Henry (bonus points to Black Library fans who get the reference).

This one is my review of Nate Crowley’s Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!

And then there are another two examples of other reviewers’ work being lifted from Goodreads and copied into Audible under Henry’s name. The earliest example of these dates back to October 2021, so it’s clearly been going on for a while. And these are just what my friend found after a quick search.

One of the other pilfered reviews (that we found – there may be more!)

So I keep coming back to the question of why – what motivates Henry to borrow other people’s book reviews and pass them off as his own? Spreading the word about a good book hardly seems like the normal use case for plagiarism, after all. It’s not malicious, and as far as I can see he isn’t exactly making a big song and dance about ‘his’ reviews. Barring the occasional Twitter conversation with authors I can’t see what he gets out of it. A quick look at his Twitter feed suggests that he does genuinely enjoy a lot of Black Library books, so I’m really not sure why he doesn’t just write a few quick reviews of his own. Perhaps it’s laziness, although for the effort it must take to find a good review on Goodreads, copy and paste it into Audible and come up with his own headline, I feel like he might as well just throw a few of his own words together.

The funny thing is that ultimately, Henry using my words as his own in a positive review – of a book I enjoyed, on a platform I don’t normally cross-post to – is no bad thing really. In fact, it’s arguably a good thing overall (good reviews being very useful to authors), and perhaps I should take this as a reminder to be better at cross-posting reviews to other platforms! Still, plagiarism is plagiarism, and at a minimum it’s a bit naughty – and other reviewers might not look so kindly upon it – so while (as I said earlier) I don’t have any intention of publicly outing him, I’ve no qualms about pointing out that this is happening. Book reviewers beware, and all that.

If I’m honest, part of me is tempted to try to get in touch with Henry and ask him straight up why he’s doing this. It would be quite interesting to know, right? The greater part of me probably can’t be bothered, but the temptation is there. In the meantime, I’ve used this experience as motivation to write a (slightly) longer review of the Kingmaker, and have posted it on Track of Words already – you can read that here – so all’s well that ends well. I don’t really have any conclusions to draw from this strange experience, other than to reiterate that as far as I’m concerned, plagiarising other people’s book reviews is very strange behaviour! And if by any chance Henry is reading this…just write your own reviews, maybe?!

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So what do you think then, have you got any theories about Henry’s motivations? Are these his first steps towards book review world domination? Does he have a cunning plan we’re yet to fully understand? Let me know in the comments below, or over on Twitter!

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