Draft stealing is absolutely a thing that happens. Not infrequently, an author will shop a book around to different publishers, and then a publisher will like t

Draft stealing is absolutely a thing that happens. Not infrequently, an author will shop a book around to different publishers, and then a publisher will like the title and pay someone less to rewrite it than buying it and get it to market before the original. There's been a few relatively high profile cases of this in the media over the years. Same shit happens to scriptwriters and music artists.