One of my test readers turned out to be untrustworthy and my manuscript may have been ripped off

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Derimed

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Dear agent,

I am taking longer than forever to finish my two-novel series. The series contains a lot of content from three prior unpublished manuscripts, which I believe to be not-so-great in general and I wanted to instead take the good portions of them towards my new projects. I do have the three prior manuscripts copyrighted with the Library of Congress, and am able to prove authenticity, but I am not rich and can't afford lawyers.

The copyrighting of unpublished content was something I did because I know I tend to trust the wrong people, and it turns out I have. My ex-girlfriend seemed very nice, long story short she wasn't. She has the three unpublished manuscripts and may have done God-knows-what with them.

I am afraid that once I finally finish my two current projects, I'll submit them to agents and then if it turned out some of the content of them "wasn't mine," I might get blacklisted due to the agent thinking I am a plagiarist. Once my manuscripts are ready to send out to agents, how could I find out if some of my original and copyrighted content ended up in someone else's work first? How would I deal with such a situation if it did turn out that my content was jacked?

Sorry for the long question, and thank you very much for your time.
 

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So, by your account this previous material was "not-so-great." What value would your ex have in taking that work and submitting it? By the time you change the work into your new stories and she changes the work (if she sees some worth in doing so, which is unlikely) into something she thought she could sell, the chances of the two resembling each other is slim.

Your work is copyrighted the moment you write it, whether you register it or not. Truth be told, there's no point in copyrighting unpublished drafts because even a completely polished work you're submitting to agents will most likely change before it's published.
 

Derimed

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I actually didn't say that, I said, in general it was not-so-great, but pieces of it were good, and I integrated those pieces into what I am working on now.

The motive would be malice, which it can often be with bad people.

I am worried that some paragraphs or sentences (which I took verbatim from the earlier manuscripts) end up somewhere else, and how to deal with the possibility of that happening.
 

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I’m sorry you had this issue with your ex, but I honestly doubt this will be an issue. Agents gets hundreds of queries a day, they rarely remember specifics unless they request the work. And let’s be real, a ton of books they look at have similarities. There are only so many stories or tropes!

I will also say (Janet Reid has discussed this on her blog) that registering copyright before querying can cause a lot of problems. As Sage said, you don’t have to do it. Emailing a copy to yourself is enough to establish date/ownership. And once the publisher buys the book, the copyright is theirs. Having a conflicting claim on the book can cause issues on their end. Plus it’s a waste of money on your end!
 

Derimed

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I am guessing agents have some sort of procedure for detecting plagiarism, without which they could not catch it. Grammarly only detects against things published on the internet, Turnitin requires subscription and seems to be tailored to organizations rather than individuals.

I very much appreciate your response and your time, but I took a look at your post history and you do say in a recent post you aren't an agent. I hope you'll believe me that I don't want to be rude to anyone, but I was hoping to get a response from an agent, since this is listed as the forum for that.
 
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mccardey

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This is not a letter you should send.
 

lizmonster

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And once the publisher buys the book, the copyright is theirs. Having a conflicting claim on the book can cause issues on their end.

No - the copyright is still mine. A publisher pays for specific rights, such as distribution and adaptation, but the only rights they get are the ones I agree to sell them. They don't ever own the work itself.
 

PyriteFool

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No - the copyright is still mine. A publisher pays for specific rights, such as distribution and adaptation, but the only rights they get are the ones I agree to sell them. They don't ever own the work itself.

Thanks for the correction! I should have been more clear that they only buy certain rights.
 

lizmonster

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I am guessing agents have some sort of procedure for detecting plagiarism, without which they could not catch it. Grammarly only detects against things published on the internet, Turnitin requires subscription and seems to be tailored to organizations rather than individuals.

I very much appreciate your response and your time, but I took a look at your post history and you do say in a recent post you aren't an agent. I hope you'll believe me that I don't want to be rude to anyone, but I was hoping to get a response from an agent, since this is listed as the forum for that.

We do get occasional agents in here, but mostly for organized Q&As. Most of the people answering here aren't agents.

I do think you're worrying for nothing, but I know I'm not the one you want to hear from. I agree with mccardey, though: that's not a letter you want to send.
 

Derimed

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We do get occasional agents in here, but mostly for organized Q&As. Most of the people answering here aren't agents.

I do think you're worrying for nothing, but I know I'm not the one you want to hear from. I agree with mccardey, though: that's not a letter you want to send.

Thank you for the clarification. I think you're right that I am worrying about nothing, but I also think everybody has had encounters with total psychos, and they do have that effect on people.

I am a little confused at what you guys mean by "letter." I am writing manuscripts. I certainly wouldn't send this in a letter to an agent under my own real name, but I thought if agents are on this forum they'd be willing to answer the question.

If there's some method by which I can check my manuscripts against other existing manuscripts, or if intellectual property attorneys have a device for this, I wouldn't mind shelling out a billable hour to quit worrying.

Thanks again.
 

Derimed

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That sounds like a letter. For myself, I assumed it was a letter you were sending to an agent.

No, just was writing on note on the forums with it. Thanks for the advice, though.
 

katfeete

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I’m also not an agent, but I’d like to point out that the standard procedure in the industry is to submit a query letter, synopsis, and a few sample pages to agents in the hopes of getting an agent to request the full. For your ex to burn you in the way you describe she’d have needed to craft a query packet so compelling that agents would be requesting and reading fulls left and right — a task so monumentally difficult AW has an entire subforum dedicated to it. Even for a psycho this seems a high enough bar to encourage just keying your car and calling it a night.

Agents may have a method for detecting plagiarism, but if so it would be much further down the road than the query stage and directed towards published work. I’ve heard many agents describe their process over the years and this is just not a concern. No one (except perhaps the authors) worries about unpublished manuscripts being plagiarized; there’s just too many of them, and too little value compared to ripping off the work of someone who’s proved they can sell. Even if an agent were to notice, “hey, this passage I’m reading seems vaguely familiar,” they would likely assume you’d submitted a different version, possibly under a pen name, and were trying again.

Your ex cannot harm you with this even if she wanted to. Breathe. :)
 

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If there's some method by which I can check my manuscripts against other existing manuscripts, or if intellectual property attorneys have a device for this, I wouldn't mind shelling out a billable hour to quit worrying.

When would you do this? Today? Before you submitted an MS to an agent? Before you signed a contract with the agent? Before it went to publishers? Before it you signed a contract with the publisher?

It's been a while since I've used Turnitin or other programs to check students' work, but as I recall the other MSS would have to be either published online or in the plagiarism checkers' databases before you could perform a useful search. And then all the MSS you submitted would be added to the database for future checks. I suspect most cases of non-academic plagiarism are discovered by readers after publication.

I am not an agent.
 

mccardey

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No, just was writing on note on the forums with it. Thanks for the advice, though.
I'm not advising - I'm just saying that's why I thought it was a letter you were planning to send.
 

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Dear agent,

I am taking longer than forever to finish my two-novel series. The series contains a lot of content from three prior unpublished manuscripts, which I believe to be not-so-great in general and I wanted to instead take the good portions of them towards my new projects. I do have the three prior manuscripts copyrighted with the Library of Congress, and am able to prove authenticity, but I am not rich and can't afford lawyers.

You have registered the works with LOC.

You already had the copyright. Registering mostly just means that should you prove infringement in court you are potentially eligable for more money in damages; in addition, the court would have to weigh the potential commercial value of the infringement.

It is highly unlikely that the works as unpublished drafts have monetary value.

Should you discover that they have been published or derivatively used then you can go to court.
 
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