Is Book Quotes Post Plagiarism? What Authors Say?

by Faizan Fahim · 08/11/2022

I write many book quote posts.

For example:

I also make these types of videos.

But is it plagiarism?

Does this type of blog post made up of book quotes is plagiarized content?

The answer is Yes and NO.

We have to understand what plagiarism is. I will use the Wikipedia definition:

Plagiarism is the representation of another’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one’s own original work.

The key point of the definition (as far as I know) is that representation of other’s work as your own is considered as plagiarism.

Technically I am not passing the content as mine. The author is mentioned in the title and everywhere in the article.

But for Merriam, “plagiarize” means:

to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

By this point, my blog posts are derived from the existing source. But again I am not passing it as my own, so it is not plagiarism.

Unless, I start making merch around the quotes and start selling it. Selling the product derived from the other people’s work would be considered plag.

But again, it will depend on the artist. Some people are lenient and others are not.

If someone made a short movie based on a Stephen King story, would it be illegal? Yes and NO.

If it is a small school/college project by film students, then I don’t think Stephen king would mind. But if it is taken by Marvel or DC and made into a full-featured movie, surely Stephen King would like to have a cut from it.

But I am also running ads on my blog. However minimal. But in exchange, my blog posts are helping the author’s promotion (because authors reach out to me to make this type of posts).

In a way, what I am doing is not illegal and somewhat helps the author.

SEO of Plag

But there is another concern. As I practice SEO on my book blog to earn the google search traffic. So I have to follow the Google guideline about stealing the content.

As a SEO practitioner for the past 5 years, I know the answer to this.

Google prefers to have quotation marks around the quotes. But it is not strict.

For Google, the plagiarized content is when many bloggers are publishing the same content, and spamming the search. That’s why I don’t do blog tours and blitz. Because it’s usually the same content rotated around a hundred bloggers.

What I am doing in quote posts is not plagiarism because I am building value over the content. It is not a list of the book quotes, its images that you can share and use as wallpaper. So it is not completely spamming. But it has additional value for the users.

In conclusion, the book quote posts are not plagiarism. Nor are they illegal.

I also ask Nina de Gramont if the post I have written on her book is plagiarism.

And here is her reply. And she find my blog post lovely.

I don’t, because they’re attributed! I think the blog post is lovely (though a couple of the quotes belong to Agatha Christie, not me!)
— Nina de Gramont (@NinadeGramont) October 18, 2022