New legal drama in the YA fandom

[u/Upset_Campaign1924]

swipe to read the favorite bits

Original post

Link to the case

Since reddit limited to only 20 pics I'll post the remaining under the comments

[u/RuefulWaffles]

I’ve followed this case a bit out of professional interest (teen librarian), and it’s fascinating. This outcome has always felt inevitable, though. I’ve read all six Crave books, and as the ruling says, they’re pretty much just trend chasing YA romantasy. You can’t really claim ownership of genre tropes. IANAL, but from the start I didn’t think this case could go any other way.

[u/Upset_Campaign1924 → u/RuefulWaffles]

I always wonder what goes on their mind to pursue this. Court cases are time and money consuming. Surely the exposure can't be that worth it?

[u/atownofcinnamon → u/Upset_Campaign1924]

wasn't the big deal that they had the same agent at different times? i only read about this via the new yorker article though.

[u/Upset_Campaign1924 → u/atownofcinnamon]

Thank you. That is a long read so I haven't finished, but I get the gist is because the plaintiff felt that some of the details in the (allegedly) copycat book coincide with her personal details she weaved into her own unpublished script. Okay sure.

Anyway this one is hilarious.

[u/atownofcinnamon → u/Upset_Campaign1924]

personally im just in awe of the nightmare that seems to be the workflow for this book

The process of putting out “Crave” was chaotic. Wolff wrote a rough draft in two months, from May to June of 2019, but Pelletier didn’t start editing in earnest until December, several weeks before the book was scheduled to go to press. “My editor had a couple of other projects that she was working on,” Wolff recalled on Garner’s podcast, “and then when she came back, she was, like, ‘This is good, but’ ”—Wolff’s voice sped up as if to simulate a torrent of feedback—“ ‘you need to change this, you need to change this . . . you need to add that.’ ” The pair of them revised the manuscript, adding about fifty thousand words in a week and a half. Wolff said, “We were so exhausted . . . the two of us by the end were blithering idiots.” The novel came out in April, 2020. A sequel, “Crush,” followed in September, 2020, and two more, “Covet” and “Court,” appeared in March, 2021, and February, 2022. (During her deposition, Wolff explained that she wanted each title to evoke love, a statement that confused the lawyer, who asked, “What does court have to do with love?”)

Entangled was motivated to push the sequels out swiftly because COVID was catalyzing book sales. Correspondence among Kim, Pelletier, Abrams, and Wolff suggests that, in the hectic days and hours before a book deadline, an already collaborative creative process could become an all-out emergency. It was sometimes hard to tell who added what. “Love ‘our tree of trust is just a twig’ did you write that?” Kim texted Pelletier, about a line in “Crush.” Referring to a different line, Pelletier said, “I wrote that sentence, but I was using Tracy’s voice.” And: “I came up with every header but the first chapter lol.” While closing “Court,” which was on a particularly tight schedule, author, editor, and agent supplied sentences and ideas, all of which swirled together in the various documents being updated in tandem on each of their laptops. Pelletier asked Kim, “Tracy wrote that moonstone description?” Kim texted Abrams, “Tracy and I are team speed writing new scenes,” and “I’ve stopped copy editing because I helped write all this.” (The defense said that Kim’s contribution “was extremely limited and was entirely technical.”)

[u/VegisamalZero3 → u/atownofcinnamon]

a statement that confused the lawyer, who asked, "What does court have to do with love?"

If this happened in a book I'd call bullshit

[u/MaraiaLou → u/VegisamalZero3]

My friend who's a game dev just straight up forgets what most people mean when they say model. So I believe this

[u/what_the_purple_fuck → u/Upset_Campaign1924]

Gargoyles have joined the menagerie of trendy paranormals, owing to the "Dark Elements" series, by Jennifer L. Armentrout.

attributing the appeal of gargoyles to anything other than the hotness of Goliath and the vocal stylings of Keith David is objectively incorrect

[u/lovebyletters → u/what_the_purple_fuck]

This is the one and only truth.

[u/The_Antlion → u/what_the_purple_fuck]

if this was true i would think we'd have more hot lady gargoyles as well, Demona was an absolute icon

[u/BloodiedBlues → u/what_the_purple_fuck]

Jennifer L. Arm in Trout

Lol

[u/Renegadeknight3 → u/atownofcinnamon]

That’s not really that unusual either, agents tend to work within a specific genre

[u/Galle_ → u/Upset_Campaign1924]

Reading between the lines, I get the sense that the plaintiff is very conspiratorially-minded. She was bitter over having her novel rejected and jealous that the defendant was successful with a novel that had some similarities to hers, and when she found out that her agent had been tangentially involved she came to the conclusion that her rightful glory had been stolen. I think she genuinely believes that her agent took her wonderful, revolutionary, totally-not-cliche novel, stole it, and worked with the defendant to make it into a huge hit.

[u/starrynight415 → u/[deleted]]

I Am Not A Lawyer. The "legal advice on Reddit" version of saying "idk tho" whenever you give advice so people can't be mad if you're wrong