Mark Dawson: Plagiarist, or shrewd businessman?

On the Mark Dawson Plagiarism scandal.

Ok, I’m sure you are thinking, “Who is Mark Dawson?”

My first thought was an actor from the 1990s. His name has that sort of ring.

But no, he’s actually a prominent person in the self-publishing book industry known from the 20 books to 50k Facebook group (and convention – though I hear it has been renamed) and for selling courses on how to run ads for your books. That’s an important detail I will broaden later.

Basically, he’s a book business guy, but being a book business guy, people paid attention to him (and bought his courses) because he had (supposedly) sold a lot of books and made a lot of money doing it.

Well, now an inquisitive and enterprising soul has dug into his fiction and found numerous alleged instances of plagiarism. See the full Reddit post/thread here:

www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/18n30jn/i_believe_bestselling_author_mark_dawson_is_a/

It’s a lot.

Now, before I go further, I am not accusing Mark Dawson of Plagiarism. Before we even begin arguing over that, we have to define plagiarism. Most people’s idea of what plagiarism is happens to be incorrect. Making a character that is like another or a plot that is very similar to another is not plagiarism in the technical sense. What is fascinating about the Dawson accusations is that they might fit the bill of technical literary plagiarism, which is defined in most places as passing another person’s words or ideas off as your own. In a technical paper, this could be not citing another person’s work and presenting it as your idea, but in the literary space, it is passing off a specific work (or section) as something you yourself wrote, which would make sense in the context of writing fiction books.

The reason that is so strange is that, as a writer, it would be more difficult and time-consuming for me to do what Dawson has allegedly done, which is to copy passages from other books than it would be to simply write new sentences. When I am drafting, it is rather cumbersome for me to go fetch other books and lift random sentences from them, and I don’t remember every piece of prose I have ever read that might be theft-worthy. Also of note is how long it has taken (almost ten years) for anyone to notice. Keep in mind that one of these allegations is a rip from Stephen Hunter, a very popular author.

I’ve come up with a few possible explanations for this. One or all of them may be at play.

1)     He might have fewer real readers than he makes out, and thus, there are fewer people able to scrutinize what he is doing.

2)     He somehow did all or some of it unintentionally.

3)     He knows that readers often skip prose and don’t remember it to compare it to other works.

4)     He used some sort of computer assistance back in the day, which would make plagiarism less time-consuming. I can also entertain the possibility that when he needed something he didn’t know how to write (like a sniper), he googled it and copied it quickly.

5)     His ghostwriters and co-writers did it. His name does appear with collaborators, and though he is unlikely to admit it, he may also have hired ghostwriters who performed the plagiarism without his knowledge, and he never picked up on it.

6)     The market is so granulated that you can freely plagiarize from work outside of your chosen niche and be reasonably sure nobody will ever realize it. His chosen niches may also target the kind of readers least likely to scrutinize him.

It could be elements of all these things or other things that I haven’t thought of (if he did, indeed, plagiarize or swipe passages).

Maybe he (or other authors) got a passage where he didn’t understand how to write something (like a sniper shooting a rifle) and then went and grabbed an expert author’s book and just ripped those passages to get to the next part. Maybe he forgot to rewrite them in an edit. Or maybe he assumed nobody cared – and can you blame him? For ten years, nobody did.

These allegations should also give independent authors pause and make them consider some of the bigger implications here, which I have spoken about in the past.

If Mark Dawson could maximize his earning potential by doing the method he sells to others, he wouldn’t bother selling it, and he would just do it and spend his free time sipping pina coladas on a beach somewhere. One of the things I realized a few years ago, which I keep repeating, is that there is more money in author services than in writing fiction books. What is Dawson selling, and who is he selling it to?

From the Reddit post:

Fixed the part where I said he had sold 6 million books. Someone in the comments said the 6 million figure is for downloads, which includes freebies, so the actual sales figure may be a bit different. His latest John Milton book, which isn’t out yet, says “Five Million Copies Sold” on the cover, though that might just be for the John Milton series specifically. But his site says, “6 million books downloaded worldwide,” not sold.

He’s not selling books. Maybe he’s not even writing books.

He’s selling the idea of being a successful author to people who want to be successful authors.

This doesn’t mean his methods for advertising or “writing to market” or anything else don’t work. It means his business is now directed toward authors. I see the same thing in other industries, such as “life coaching,” where the point is to sell courses on how to be a life coach. It’s like Amway with more steps.

Just as a litmus test, look at that 6 million figure. That’s big. Very big. GIANT in the book world. That means he’s moved as many books as Soundgarden sold recordings of Superunknown. Different industry, I know, but selling anything in the millions means you are in the territory of some kind of cultural impact. If millions of people are buying your work, millions more will know about it.

How many normal people do you know who have talked about Mark Dawson? My guess is zero. If you brought him up, how many people would you have to get through before you got a person who had even heard the name? What about Faulkner, who sold 10 million books over a much longer life? For Whom the Bell Tolls was a runaway blockbuster hit with half a million units back when people actually read. Get the idea? Even I, in the industry and actively publishing books, only have an inkling of who Mark is when someone mentions 20booksto50k in connection with him or hocks his ads courses for him (Kindlepreneur being a prime offender).

It is that idea that sells. The vision of being an author. Of being a respected artist and being “successful.” Maybe of being famous and well-liked. People will make big sacrifices to make that vision come true, and there are plenty of people helping you to make those sacrifices, of the financial variety, to help you realize your dream. As an aside, people pursue trad publishing for the same reasons, just with the step of getting the approval of editors and publishers rather than learning to make advertisements on Amazon.

But I will level with all of you. Authenticity in the entertainment industry, including publishing, is a very rare thing. If you are good with your BS detector, bovine feces is all over the industry in regards to sales numbers, income, ad spend… you name it. I do my best not to throw shit at you. I’ve made dozens, maybe hundreds, of videos on writing and publishing books, and they are free because I don’t want people to get taken for a ride, and I know a few who have… bad. I do offer some services to those who ask for them, but I mostly sell books and albums, and that is what I want to sell.

The truth is almost everything you see in publishing can be purchased. Not just things like covers or editing but also things like reviews, ratings, and even rankings. Think about all the fake reviews on amazon for garbage products. You think authors aren’t doing the same thing?

I let go of the vision of “indie author” when I realized people were trying to sell it to me. Why am I doing this? I can make money in a variety of ways if I have to; I don’t need to lower my artistic standards and bleed my soul by writing a 20-book series in a targeted microgenre and then spending my savings on six months of ads to (maybe, hopefully…probably not) have an income. And do those “successful” books have any impact on anyone? They’re the French fries of literature. If you love French fries, great. Make French fries. I have my own vision I’m pursuing, and it’s in the work, not in money (though I don’t want to lose money), not in the title of “author.”

I guess I am indie author after all, though, so you can buy some of my books down below or check out my music on bandcamp. You can also join me on Patreon or Ko-fi for commissions and free books.