After weeks of scandal and speculation, the bestselling author Nora Roberts has formally filed a lawsuit against Brazilian romance writer Cristiane Serruya, who stands accused of committing “multi-plagiarism” on a “rare and scandalous” level.
Roberts, who has written more than 200 novels and sold more than 500m books around the world, filed her lawsuit to a court in Rio de Janeiro. The suit claims that Serruya’s books are “a literary patchwork, piecing together phrases whose form portrays emotions practically identical to those expressed in the plaintiff’s books.” She is asking for damages at 3,000 times the value of the highest sale price for any Serruya work mentioned in the lawsuit, according to the Associated Press newswire; six of Serruya’s books are cited as including plagiarised passages, including Royal Love and From the Baroness’s Diary, with the court papers including examples of similarities with Roberts’ titles Unfinished Business, River Ends and Whiskey Beach. It also alleges plagiarism of “dozens” of other authors.
Serruya’s alleged plagiarism of other authors was first highlighted by romance novelist Courtney Milan in February, with readers uncovering multiple examples of near-identical passages from multiple different authors. According to Roberts, 41 authors and 93 books have been infringed by Serruya; Roberts writes on her blog that “the scope of her theft is so huge, so stunningly wide, she really has nowhere to go, no excuses or reasons that can possibly hold even a drop of water”.
“If you plagiarise, I will come for you,” Roberts said. “If you take my work, you will pay for it and I will do my best to see you don’t write again.” She told the New York Times: “A lot of the other writers involved in this, they don’t have the money to fight it. I do have the money.”
Serruya previously blamed any instances of overlap on a ghostwriter she said she had hired from freelance services marketplace Fiverr. In an interview with the AP, she denied copying Roberts’ work, and said she had not been notified about the lawsuit, but added that she “could not guarantee” that the ghostwriters she used had not copied anything.
“My books are big. In a book of 120,000 words it’s difficult to know how many supposedly came from a work of Nora Roberts,” said Serruya, who claimed she was using software to analyse her books.
In her novel Untamed, Roberts writes: “Leisurely, he began to loosen her hair, working his fingers through it until it pooled over her shoulders. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you. It’s hair to get lost in.’” In Forevermore, Serruya includes the passage: “Leisurely, he began to loosen her hair, working his fingers through it until it pooled over her shoulders and cascaded down over her back. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you.’”
Roberts has filed plagiarism lawsuits before, suing her friend and fellow author Janet Dailey in 1997 and donating the damages to Literacy Volunteers of America. This time, Roberts said she would donate any damages to a literacy program in Brazil.
