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I'm really bugged about something that happened this week to an author acquaintance of mine. This lady has been quite successful and has many books to her credit. She's made a career as a traditionally published author and now is branching into indie publishing.
She was contacted by someone who said they had been given an ARC to read and review. The book was scheduled to come out in August. The person said the book was almost identical to one of the author's books that had been released about fifteen years ago. Now, the author writes clean romances, and this book even had a religious element. In the ARC, the character names had been changed and the religious scenes replaced with graphic sex scenes. But it was HER book.
As you can imagine, the author was appalled.
She asked if the person would email her a copy of the ARC. The person who had contacted her declined, but did ask
Um, no.
Then my friend contacted P, and she went all defensive. Said a mistake had been made, and she would pull the book. But she also went sobbing on FB about it, and now her fans are attacking my friend.
Like she has done something wrong by protesting the theft of her intellectual property.
It blows me away. It disgusts me.
I cannot fathom the sense of violation I would feel if someone stole my creative work and passed it off as their own. If they twisted these characters, who had lived in my mind and heart for years, into mockeries of what they were.
Please be careful, both with your own work and with other people's. Please. 
ETA: P has been outed big time by one of the reviewers who took the effort to read the original book.
