After writing about my original works appearing on a pirate website, I got a message from a fanfiction reader who asked me why I’d only posted half my story on Wattpad when it was completed on fanfiction.net.

I was confused and asked them which story they meant. I explained that all my stories on Wattpad are complete and that there are only nine of them.*

Best friends Love to Share, they respond.

The what now?

My story is titled Best Friends Share Everything.

So I go look. Yep. There it is. Copied. Even the summary is the same. And the title on the first chapter. I’m more annoyed that they have cut out my reference to tribal gods from the disclaimer. I always say:

the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer – this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.

The reader thought it was me. Perhaps she’d asked the Wattpad author the same question and they hadn’t answered her?

So it’s off to the official reporting page I go.

But I just don’t get it. I can get plagiarism at a fiscal level. That’s just basic theft. But how does this work for free works? You post a story that isn’t yours. You get reviews, comments, kudos that are not yours. You have not earned them. How do you feel any real worth from that? If it was me, it would make me double down on the shame.

But I guess that’s it, it wasn’t me.

 

*I found Wattpad a less than easy site to both navigate and post stuff on. It was also hard to get reviews for anything. I haven’t posted on there for a while.

But here’s my page: AM Gray aka mrstrentreznor