The Rise of Plagiarism in the Age of Self-Publishing Books on Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble - The Atlantic

With that single exchange, Nunes found herself part of a trend affecting many professional authors in the age of self-publishing. An anonymous stranger seemed to have stolen her book, changed it superficially, and passed it off as her own work. First published in 1998, A Bid for Love did well enough to spawn two sequels before it eventually went out-of-print. Mullens' book, titled The Auction Deal, looked like the same story with much of the same language. In Chapter 2, Nunes writes, "The dark brown curls were everywhere. They were a curse, and had been for twenty-eight of Cassi's twenty-nine years." Compare that to Chapter 2 of Mullen's book, which begins, "Dark brunette curls were everywhere. They were a curse, and had been for the thirty-one years of my life."