If you don’t know who Mark Dawson is, he’s a self-published author who wrote 20 books in 2 years and has 203,722 ratings on Goodreads. He says himself that he’s sold over 6 million books. He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole.
I was wondering how this guy published so many books in so little time and I found my answer: he stole a lot of his material.
* \[2013 William Boyd interviews James Bond by William Boyd from the Guardian\] “the gaudy harlequinade of youth much in evidence”
* \[2014 The Driver by Mark Dawson\] “The harlequinade of youth much in evidence”
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* \[2013 William Boyd interviews James Bond by William Boyd from the Guardian\] “the dark-eyed girls in their short dresses and the long-haired young men in crushed velvet and fur-trimmed Afghans”
* \[2014 The Driver by Mark Dawson\] “Long-haired young men in vintage suits and fur-trimmed Afghans, and girls in short dresses”
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* \[2012 *Annecy shootings: On a steep forest road, few signs of the horror that was* by John Lichfield for the Independent\] “The misty slopes of the massif of the Montagne de Charbon tower above the treeline”
* \[2013 The Cleaner by Mark Dawson\] “The misty slopes of the massif of the Montagne de Charbon stretched above the treeline”
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* \[2009 I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter\] “He settled in, feeling the tension in the trigger, finding his stock weld, sliding to the eyepiece, and seeing the world through the mil-dot-rich reticle…”
* \[2014 Tarantula by Mark Dawson\] “The man settled behind the rifle. He felt the tension in the trigger, found his stockweld and slid up to the eyepiece, staring into it and seeing the ridge and the trees and the vegetation through the mil-dot-rich reticle.”
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* \[2009 I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter\] ”Then pulling out his Kestral 4000 weather station and noting the wind, humidity, and temperature.”
* \[2014 Tarantula by Mark Dawson\] “Took out a small weather station and noted the wind, the humidity, and temperature.”
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* \[2009 I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter\] “He dialed the first into the scope of the rifle, clicking mostly elevation but some windage, for there was a drift of light wind that rustled undulations in the grass.
* \[2014 Tarantula by Mark Dawson\] “The trees were rustling a little in a light breeze that was running in off the sea \[…\] He dialled the first into the scope of the rifle, making adjustments for windage.”
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* \[2009 I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel by Stephen Hunter\] “… the smell of the cleaning fluid, the touch of hand to comb, cheek to fiberglass, finger to trigger”
* \[2014 Tarantula by Mark Dawson\] “… the smell of the cleaning fluid that had been used on its metallic parts, the cold touch of the aluminum eyepiece against his eye socket. He felt the chill of the fibreglass stock against his cheek.”
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* \[2010 Amexica: War Along the Borderline by Ed Vulliamy\] “We pass the iron girder skeleton of a building that never seems to get finished”
* \[2013 Saint Death Mark Dawson\] “Milton passed the iron girder skeleton of a building”
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* \[2010 Amexica: War Along the Borderline by Ed Vulliamy\] “little shops, outlets for cocaine, marijuana, synthetic drugs, and heroin—which in Juarez are called picaderos, usually marked by a shoe tied to a nearby telegraph wire”
* \[2013 Saint Death Mark Dawson\] “Milton knew about Juarez \[…\] Illicit outlets—picaderos—were marked out by shoes slung over nearby telegraph wires, and their shifty proprietors sold whatever illicit substance you needed to get high”
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* An older version of Saint Death said “Illicit outlets––picaderos––were marked out by shoes slung over nearby telegraph wires and their shifty proprietors sold cocaine, marijuana, synthetic drugs and heroin. The legitimate marketplace at Cerrajeros was busy with custom, a broad sweep of unwanted bric-a-brac for sale: discarded furniture, soda fountains, hair curlers, Kelvinator fridges.” but he changed it. So it was even more plagiarized before. You can look it up in Google and it’ll show up, though it leads to a weird scam site which will try to convince you that you have a virus on your computer but I still think that counts as proof as I’m assuming the scam site simply copied an older version of his book verbatim before he sent out an update through Kindle to cover up his more blatant plagiarism.
* This also matches up to another passage from Amexica: “… lines the streets in overload quantities: sixties furniture, soda fountains, hair curlers, Kelvinator cookers and Osterizer blenders…” So Mark changed sixties furniture to discarded furniture and Kelvinator cookers to Kelvinator fridges. Nice.
And I found all this in an hour or two, just looking at a few of his books, and only looking at the first few pages which were available for free in the Kindle sample and typing suspicious sentences into Google. He’s probably plagiarized a lot more and hidden it with after-the-fact edits and rearranging words in a way that’s harder to check using a search engine.
Basic rule: read through one of his books and type any phrase that seems either interesting and profound or technical about matters he’s not familiar with like guns into Google in quotes. You’ll probably find that he took it from somewhere else.
“Harlequins of youth much in evidence?” Never heard that sentence before. Oh, he didn’t write it.
“Fur-trimmed Afghans?” What are those? Oh, he probably doesn’t know either. Because he didn’t write it.
“Misty slopes of the massif” “Mil-dot-rich reticle” “iron girder skeleton of a building” etc.
For original prose you get clunky purple prose like “the sun glared down, a myriad of shafts that lanced into his eyes.” I mean, a myriad of shafts sounds like you’re talking about golf clubs or genitals. I would HOPE neither of those are lancing you in the eye.
It seems unfair that he’s reportedly sold 6 million books and is so involved in these groups while heavily plagiarizing when books like *How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life* get cancelled entirely for plagiarism. But maybe in self-publishing things just work differently. But I feel like an author who sells 6 million books should be held to a higher standard whether they’re self-published or not.
(If this was not the right sub to post something like this, then I apologize and I’ll take it down. I just thought more people should know about this because it seems like most of his fans have no idea he plagiarizes.)
by wilsebbis