Hey guys, I never read the series but I stumbled upon a document/indictment (someone posted a link on instagram) which listed the accusations against the author and her agent. Apparently they stole the work and ideas of another author who tried to publish her manuscript via Wolff's agent in 2009. Normally this kind of stuff is promptly discussed on Instagram and Booktok but I can't find any articles or videos anywhere and Tracy Wolff is still posting regularly about 'her' books even though the parallels listed in the document are appalling tbh.
Has someone else heard about it?
*I would like to add that the accusation in this case is NOT that Tracy Wolff copied TWILIGHT or any other published work, but an unpublished manuscript that was overseen by Wolff's agent.
by WandaLizm
6 Comments
The link to the indictment: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21564103-lynne-freeman-v-tracyt-wolff-crave-copyright-complaint
I mean it’s pretty much a rip off of Twilight anyway. With some added Vampire Academy.
The writing is abysmal.
I don’t understand how it’s so popular.
There are a ton of tropes there that a doubter could initially handwave away, but after a while one has to say…um, someone has some explaining to to.
Especially since the original author registered it with Copyright Office (although the date isn’t mentioned)
I got halfway through and gave up it was so y/n wattpad
I’m going to wait and see because Freeman also asked that all the hard drives related to Wolff’s 2010/11 books be taken in order, I *think* to show that she (freeman) told the agent her favorite Ducati and that engendered a title change in Wolff’s book…or something. And feels that e-mail dates were backdated…even though that wouldn’t change the final outcome since the book was already in production. There’s no suggestion that Wolff used plot, stole storyline, or wording, etc., on this previous series and also no proof on Freeman’s that the event asking about the Ducati actually happened, meaning that there was no real reason to try for this info except maybe to prove that the relationship, at that stage, was already delving into the territory of using Freeman’s ideas.
Nearly every time I’ve seen one author go after another and resort to this type of incremental issues, easily proven wrong, the author has been loony-balls. https://casetext.com/case/freeman-v-deebs-elkenaney-16
People often come up with extraordinarily similar ideas and text at similar times, just because of how the world works, and frankly the page number thing is weird, because you wouldn’t be comparing the same types of pages (published vs unpublished book). There *is* overlap, but that type of story was super popular during that decade and there is also enough difference that I’m iffy on whether I would personally consider it infringement. Now, if the agent really did show Freeman’s work to Wolff, and Wolff stole it? F them. They deserve everything coming to them. But I’d want more proof than I’ve yet seen. I’ve seen other stories as substantially similar. It’s also possible that the agent was the main instigator, that she said things like, ooh, why don’t you do this here and that there? And Tracy Wolff had no idea. Which would be bad in a totally different (but still super sucky)way. There are some significant questions; I could totally get behind either the agent having led Wolff to include certain things, or wholesale lifting of certain things…or it not really being anything at all.
I read a bunch of what’s happened in the case so far…which isn’t much. I’ll probably keep following it, because honestly, I think, conceivably, any of the scenarios might be the one that comes out as truth.
Any updates on this?