Plagiarisms, Algorithms, and Ostracisms

The latest outrage jolting the fiction-writing world is the Cristiane Serruya Plagiarism Scandal, or #CopyPasteCris in the Twitter world. I’ll leave it for others to gnash teeth and rend garments over the specifics of this case. As a former engineer and natural problem-solver, I prefer to look at what we might do to prevent future recurrences.

First, let me summarize. Alert and avid readers of romance books noticed matching phrases and paragraphs in two books: The Duchess War (2012) by Cour...