Best-selling author Mark Dawson, known for his John Milton series of thriller novels, is being accused of ripping off the writing of others’ published works, even lines from a gun shop website.
The explosive allegations came this week when poster u/wilsebbis on Reddit claimed to have found remarkably similar sentences in Mark Dawson’s books to sentences of other author’s published works.
These allegations have now started doing the rounds on X (Twitter), as one user posted: “#writingcommunity Bestselling author #MarkDawson has been accused of serial #plagiarism from multiple sources, inc: journalists and fellows authors.”
User u/wilsebbis claims to have found ten sentences in Mark Dawson’s books that were suspiciously similar to the words of other authors in their published works, and he said he did so “in an hour or two, just looking at a few of his [Dawson’s] books, and only looking at the first few pages which were available for free in the Kindle sample”.
He later edited his post to include even more examples, including one example that shows that Mark Dawson may even have gone so far as copying and pasting the description of a rifle straight from a firearm retailer’s website:
“[ https://hermannsguns.com.au/dsr-1/ ]“The folding bipod is mounted onto upper rails (above the barrel), and the adjustable horizontal front grip is mounted on the lower rails (under the barrel). The rifle features fully adjustable buttstock and cheekpiece. […] The barrel is protected by ventilated aluminum handguard and is fitted with muzzle brake (very useful when firing full-power magnum loads).”
[Tarantula, 43% of sample] “The folding bipod was mounted onto upper rails above the barrel and the adjustable horizontal front grip was mounted on the lower rails, under the barrel. The rifle had an adjustable stock and cheekpiece. The barrel was protected by a ventilated aluminium hand guard and was fitted with a muzzle brake, useful when firing full-power magnum loads like this.””
Other examples of Mark Dawson book plagiarism include:
“[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””
and:
“[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.””
Even though it may be reprehensible, having a few sentences here and there scattered throughout Dawson’s books does not necessarily mean that he is guilty of plagiarism, but considering that these examples provided by the Reddit user were found in a couple of hours at most. Within the first few free pages of only a few of Dawson’s books, it does not bode well for Mark Dawson.
Do you think Mark Dawson plagiarised the work of others? Let us know in the comments.
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Guy needs to plagiarize himself some hair. lol
Yes, clearly, he has copied the intellectual property of other authors and claimed it as his own for publication. The examples in the revealing Reddit post by u/wilsebbis are from the ‘look inside’… from books published in 2014 through the current day, which means Dawson has gotten away with plagiarism for some time.
That explains why someone who is a supposed ‘best seller’ has named his companies Self-Publishing Formula and Fuse Publishing. His ‘formula’ seems to be stealing the works of better writers to ‘fuse” into his own books.
Self-publishing has enough problems without having to contend with cheaters.
I’m just going on the above samples, but hey they’re just bits of description here and there. I was expecting long passages. Don’t we all collect those descriptors along the way, subconsciously, or even consciously? It’s not like he stole the idea of the story. If that’s all it is then perhaps the guy is being unfairly demonized? What was it that Picasso said… a great artist steals. Yes, I know, we’re not talking greatness here, and yes, painting is different from the written word, but I thought you’d have to at least lift a long paragraph or something more substantial than just a couple of lines of description.
Explains how he managed to write so much in the last 11 years (over 50 titles).
He just stole pre existing material