Flash in the Pan

Once again I found an anonymous comment, this time on the todo over whether Seinfeld plagiarized Lapine's cookbook. To anonymously try posting a snipping comment to this blog is to invite being mocked in the worst way possible: by the juxtaposition of rambling opinion with fact. (And I'm guessing that the person here is somehow connected with Lapine.) Here is the post:

TWO books which are:

both cookbooks
shown to the same publisher
in the same year
with the same UNIQUE recipes
on the same UNIQUE cooking concept
by authors who live in the same city
with nearly IDENTICAL book covers
both pitched to OPRAH

IS JUST A COINCIDENCE. No way, I smell a rat!

Now let's bring in the fact. First, as any author who has experienced commercial publishing for any length of time can tell you, having two people come up with the same idea at about the same time is normal. When you've got something like 180,000 new books published every year in the US, and many of the ideas are driven by common cultural values and events, then you're going to have a fair amount of duplication.

The books don't have "the same unique recipes." I direct the poster and readers to this level-headed article in Slate. Here's an interesting paragraph:

Spend 10 minutes comparing the Seinfeld and Lapine books, and you won't be able to seriously contend that there is plagiarism. (And in all the articles I've found about this tempest in a teapot, not one has pointed to a specific example of plagiarism.) Sure, the two books are based on the same unremarkable, unoriginal idea. And a handful of recipes employ some of the same obvious tricks (mostly based on hue, such as hiding sweet potato puree in a grilled cheese sandwich or spinach in brownies). But the books are quite different. For example, Seinfeld's recipe, titled "Mashed Potatoes," calls for simple cauliflower puree. Lapine's recipe for "Mystery Mashed Potatoes" specifies "White Puree," which is a separate recipe earlier in the book that consists of cauliflower, zucchini, and lemon juice. In a table comparing recipes, a New York Times blog notes that both books contain "Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins" without noting that, among several other differences, Seinfeld calls for carrot puree while Lapine calls for "orange puree," based on sweet potatoes with the addition of carrots. Not that either trick is a revelation—fleshy vegetables like sweet potatoes and carrots have long been ingredients in cakes, pies, breads, and muffins.

As the article also notes, Chris Fisk's Sneaky Veggies was another book on the same theme. However, it came out before either Seinfeld's or Lapine's - and the time it takes to produce books would pretty much eliminate the chance that Seinfeld or her publisher (or the list of people involved, as the Slate piece notes) could have seen Lapine's book, copied it, and gotten to press in the time they had. The publisher may have seen Lapine's proposal - along with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of others at the same time - but it's unlikely that there would have been enough detail in recipes to allow true copying, even if they recipes were identical.

As I mentioned in my other entry on this subject, hiding vegetables in other foods for kids is hardly a novel cooking concept. There are web recipes that predate all of these titles, and I bet if I spent, oh, about 15 minutes in our extensive cookbook collection, I could find similar recipes. Nearly identical book covers? That has nothing to do with the authors, as they have virtually no say in what is on the cover. (You're lucky if the publisher even asks you - though it looks like I will get to shoot the cover photo of the dessert book I'm currently putting together, which should be fun. Particularly when I get to eat the main prop.)

And both books pitched to Oprah! Oh, my, now there's the smoking gun. Both publishers or their PR people pitched these books to the Oprah Winfrey Show - along with the other 50,000 books that people were pushing. This is like saying there is something suspicious because two separate people actually have to breathe to exist. Getting on Oprah is one of the biggest - and most standard - ways to get significant book sales. What did you expect these people to do? Not even try?

To be fair, sometimes publishers do questionable things. I've known writers who had a publisher kick them off projects, which they had created (one got a fair sum of money in a law suit), or who had a publisher offer a look at a similar proposal (the writer turned that opportunity down). But to create a duplicate book? Nah, it would be too much work for the publisher to bother with. I realize that conspiracy theories may be more fun, but that's fiction, a topic I cover in my En Words blog.

Labels: cookbooks, Jessica Seinfeld, Missy Chase Lapine, plagiarism