For five years publishers, agents and authors were duped into sending digital copies of new books into the ether

Keywords: opinion

It is a good story and maybe we’re fascinated by instances of literary fraud precisely because publishing is still widely regarded as a business grounded in trust, relationships and old-fashioned courtesy. I’m thinking of Can You Ever Forgive Me? or the curious case of author AJ Finn, the pen name of former editor Dan Mallory, who allegedly spent years creating a fictitious biography for himself within the publishing world. The idea of someone abusing that assumption of decency for their own advantage seems more shocking in this context than it might in, say, the world of finance or arms dealing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/09/filippo-bernardini-book-thief-steal-for-money-revenge-love-of-reading