By Pascal Oparada
A Nigerian Author, Tomi Adeyemi, and popular American writer, Nora Roberts are embroiled in a plagiarism battle.
Adeyemi accused Roberts of plagiarising her book title. According to Adeyemi, Roberts is trying to profit off her book.
“It would be nice if an artist could create something special without another artist trying to shamelessly profit off it,” Adeyemi says.
it would be nice if an artist could create something special without another artist trying to shamelessly profit off it pic.twitter.com/GDCcYS2TGa
— Tomi Adeyemi (@tomi_adeyemi) November 27, 2018
But, Roberts, in an extensive reply, debunked Adeyemi’s claim, saying that Adeyemi failed to crosscheck with her before going public with her claim.
In her defence titled, “Bob rule by social media”, Roberts said Adeyemi is naive and does not know that book titles can be chosen in isolation and that having similar book titles does not amount to plagiarism.
“First, let’s address the particular title which happens to be similar,” Roberts said. “I titled this particular book. Wrote this book, turned this book on to my publisher nearly a year ago before her book – a first novel – was published. So, unless I conquered the time/space continuum, my book was actually titled before hers,” she said.
Although Adeyemi had since apologised, Roberts believes she did not do enough to stem the tide of damage done to her on social media.
update: Nora was kind enough to reach out & explain that today was the first she’d heard of my book. After talking to her, I believe our titles were created in isolation.
I’m grateful she explained & I’ve apologized, but I wanted to address it here as I know others were upset too https://t.co/OCcaUtu83F— Tomi Adeyemi (@tomi_adeyemi) November 28, 2018
A lot of Nigerians have flayed Adeyemi for fighting dirty and also recruiting social media buffs to drag the American on social media.
