Viswanathan book deal raises more questions

Hovering over the controversy around Kaavya Viswanathan's plagiarism-riddled novel is the $500,000 question: How could a publisher risk all that money on a 17-year-old who had only a bare concept and had never written a book?

The answer just might be found on the copyright page of ''How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." There it says: ''Copyright 2006 by Alloy Entertainment and Kaavya Viswanathan."

Alloy is the so-called book packager that helped the Harvard sophomore, now 19, develop the concept for her novel. Everyone involved insists she wrote every word, though Alloy president Leslie Morgenstein said in an e-mail that his firm ''helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book." Whatever the extent of its role, Alloy claimed half the rights, which according to publishing experts means that both Alloy and Viswanathan would have signed the contract.

It has been a whirlwind week for the young author and her publisher, Little, Brown & Co. Allegations surfaced Sunday that Viswanathan had borrowed heavily from another novelist, Megan McCafferty, and a day later Viswanathan acknowledged the trangressions but said they were unintentional. Little, Brown, meanwhile, announced it would revise future editions of ''Opal Mehta" to eliminate the similarities between it and McCafferty's books. McCafferty and her publisher, Crown, were unsatisfied with that response, and on Thursday night Little, Brown announced it would withdraw all unsold copies of ''Opal Mehta," which had a first printing of 100,000. Asked yesterday whether it would eventually release a revised edition of ''Opal Mehta," a Little, Brown spokesman declined to comment. Viswanathan, who has ignored the Globe's repeated requests for an interview, did not return a call to her cellphone yesterday.

Viswanathan received much attention for her novel even before the allegations of plagiarism arose, not only because of her age but because of the unusually large advance she got -- reported to be $500,000 for two books -- and because of the relationship with Alloy. In addition, the high-powered William Morris talent and literary agency represented both the author and the book packager in the deal with Little, Brown. Normally a literary agent represents the author, period. But in this case the Morris agency also represented Alloy, which it has worked with on other ''teen-lit" books. ''We represent both parties, because their interests are aligned," Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, a fiction agent with the Morris agency, said in a telephone interview. ''It's collaborative. We represent the project."

Founded as 17th Street Productions in the 1980s by Morgenstein, Alloy became a book factory in the teen-lit genre. It now cranks out 40 titles a year, often hiring writers to execute story lines. It also produces television shows and movies based on its books, including last year's ''Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," which had been a bestseller in book form.

Little, Brown publishes four series of young-adult books created by Alloy. In 2000, Morgenstein sold the business to Alloy Media + Marketing, a youth-marketing company that also owns Delia's stores, a clothing chain for teens.

Despite requests this week, neither Little, Brown nor Alloy would discuss details of their business deals, and Walsh would not say what percentage of Viswanathan's advance the packager received. ''It would never be more than half," she said. ''The agency gets paid, and we divide the monies to all the collaborators." As agent for both Alloy and Viswanathan, Walsh would have gotten her standard 15 percent of the total, no matter how the advance was divided.

Some agents this week said it sounds like a deal hashed out by the big players, leaving a neophyte author at a disadvantage.

''They are not paying out that much money to a 17-year-old with no track record," said Boston literary agent Doe Coover. ''They are paying it to this organization which has had huge hits aimed at a similar audience." And some wondered who is looking out for the creator of the work.

''If they [Alloy] get co-copyright, 50-50 of the money and 15 percent for the agent, that's not a great deal for the author," said John Taylor Williams, a Boston agent and publishing lawyer.

Jonathan Kirsch, a Los Angeles-based publishing lawyer and writer, said it is not surprising that William Morris was involved in the deal. ''They come out of the motion picture industry," he said. '' 'Developing a project' is a movie term. Movie scripts are famously written and rewritten by writer A, B, and C before they're actually filmed."

''If the author sits at her word processor in her lonely room," Kirsch said, ''and writes, 'It was a dark and stormy night,' that is a positive picture. But the more people have their fingerprints on a manuscript, the more questions are raised about the provenance."

Writers and writing teachers were scratching their heads this week over Viswanathan's statement that she had somehow ''internalized" passages from McCafferty's books ''Sloppy Firsts" and ''Second Helpings," and reproduced them unconsciously in ''Opal Mehta." Viswanathan has said she had read the books many times. In an interview with The New York Times, she suggested her excellent memory might have played a role in her errors.

''I believe it can happen, though maybe not 40 times in one novel," said novelist Jennifer Haigh of Hull. ''The writer's consciousness evolves over years for most of us. With an extremely young writer, there haven't been that many influences."

Mary Karr, an author who teaches at Syracuse University, said she, too, doesn't dismiss Viswanathan's explanation out of hand. ''I find it hard to believe she would [plagiarize] consciously," Karr said. ''The average Harvard student isn't the dimmest bulb in the bunch, and you'd have to be a complete moron to think no one would notice."

Others were more skeptical. ''It strains credulity," said Jay Atkinson, who teaches writing at Salem State College. ''You can't claim memory for some things and faulty memory for others." Marcie Hershman, who teaches at Tufts, said Viswanathan ''reminds me of some of my students. They're educated to be students. They know how to use source material -- they don't think of it as plagiarism."

As a young writer, Hershman said, she memorized sections of Joan Didion's 1972 novel, ''Play It as It Lays." ''My friend and I would recite sentences from it back and forth to each other," Hershman said. ''Did my writing have the astringency of Didion's? Clearly not. Did I think her writing was my own? You can dress up in your mom's clothes, but you know they're not really yours."