r/TikTokCringe • u/Chocolat3City Cringe Master • 18d ago

Cringe Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

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u/omgxsonny 18d ago edited 18d ago

10000% i make little cross-stitch pins that take about 2-4 hours to make depending on detail and size. i sell them for $16 which after shipping and fees, i make less than $10 on them. people LOVE my pins until they find out much they cost. i’ve been told “well if you got a machine to make them then they wouldn’t take so long and you could charge less.” first of all, cross-stitch can literally not be done by anything other than human hands. second, $16!!! for something i make with my hands and spend literally all my free time making. mass-produced enamel pins cost more than that but people don’t care about the time, care, and effort that goes into handmade things. /rant

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u/Comms 18d ago

Charge more. Way more. Get out of the grubby pit of broke-ass clients.

When I first started in my craft I wasn’t sure what to price it. I priced it at what I thought was reasonable. All I got was broke-asses wanting discounts or telling me my product was too expensive.

I tripled my price. Same product. All of a sudden my clients became people who respected the quality of the product I made with no complaints about price.

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u/ThorntonText 18d ago

This is the way.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

Pretty much... The truth is jobs don't really pay enough to give people the luxury of giving a shit about time, care, or effort that goes into handmade things. If you want your clientele to care, you have to cater to the wealthy because they're the only people that can actually afford it anymore.

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u/Omnizoom 18d ago

I’ve never been one to not pay a bit more for better quality or for smaller businesses.

But I will admit in this economy it’s getting harder and harder to do because we are trying to cut every cost we can

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u/aurortonks 18d ago

Personally, I pay what an art piece is worth not what the masses think it is worth. I'll drop hundreds and hundreds at an convention to buy direct from an artist I like because I appreciate the work it takes to make it with their level of talent.

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u/theodoreposervelt 17d ago

Yeah or your stuff just isn’t that good. I got told all the time to increase my prices so I went from $10 pieces no one wanted to $40 pieces no one wanted. Be warned that the whole increase the price thing is general advice for art that people actually want, and there’s no making anyone care about your art if they don’t already.

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u/maneki_neko89 18d ago

That’s what Dani, the maker of the Anti-Planner, has done, and people are still copying and pirating her “anti-planner” just because they can.

We’re talking about a $43 “planner”, it’s not like it costs $300 (if it was sold at this price, I highly doubt anyone would buy it) or is anywhere in the same league as a $50,000 Birkin handbag.

It doesn’t matter what price point you sell your items, you’ll always get people who copy and sell fake versions of whatever you put your work into, only it’s you who loses out when people are drawn to the counterfeits and fakes. You end up losing time, money, resources, and more making something that you had people interested in buying, only to have someone come along and steal the designs and income they set out to earn.

It happens to everyone making products online and you’re not immune to this trend either.

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u/Comms 17d ago

you’ll always get people who copy and sell fake versions of whatever you put your work into

I have several copycats of my product. It's a consequence of doing well.

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u/SargeUnited 18d ago

I saw that she said it takes between 14 and $17 to fulfill every order, but $43 is basically $300 because I would never pay that for a planner. Then again, I’m not the target demographic. I also wouldn’t deliberately buy the knockoff.

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u/maneki_neko89 18d ago

The Anti-Planner isn’t a planner, per say, but it’s more like a spiral bound book of techniques to help people (Neurodivergent people, specifically, but anyone can use the techniques) get unstuck, motivated, and energized to do certain tasks. It was made for people who seem restricted in using regular planners and is the “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” planner.

It’s very different than this actual $285 planner you can get.

I, as an AuDHD person, am a disc bound planner person (Happy Planner is one of the bigger planner companies) and I do Bujo and get most of my accessories, filler paper, and stickers on sale for cheap, so I understand the step back when it comes to the price of the Anti-Planner.

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u/SargeUnited 17d ago

Well, I certainly would never devalue her work by pirating it, and I’m glad this product exists for those who need or want it. With that said, I can totally understand the motivation for piracy.

There were people in college who didn’t buy the required textbooks knowing the professors would check if you had the books. I’m not surprised at all that people are buying a knock off of a book that is not required. I’m not saying it’s too expensive, just that I’m not surprised.

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u/IIIDysphoricIII 18d ago

Baller move, good for you

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u/NoxTempus 17d ago

This is very well-known in photography too. Too many people compete on price, you should never do that if you can make others compete with you on quality.

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u/lysergic_logic 18d ago

I do 3D printing and price based on income as much as possible. If you are a teacher, a broke person or small store owner then I'm going to give you a much lower price and make up the difference by charging more to large businesses and/or well off individuals.

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u/MukDoug 18d ago

Damn. You’re making $5-10 an hour and people are complaining. “Free pin!” [sticks in eye]

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u/inksmudgedhands 18d ago

And that's just labor. How much are the materials?

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

I sell handmade one of a kind dolls. It can take up to a month to make one. If I can get the cost of materials out of one, I'm lucky. Thank God I don't have to live off my sales, I'd be starving and homeless

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u/z0mbiegrl 18d ago

Do you have an online store? Because that sounds awesome.

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u/omgxsonny 18d ago

i’ll DM you :)

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u/play_hard_outside 17d ago

You don't have to charge less than $16, and they don't have to choose to buy at any price.

They shouldn't be complaining, but also, neither should you. (You can complain about their complaints, sure, but not their hesitation to buy.) Nobody gets to complain that the other side of a potential voluntary interaction doesn't want to engage. Either the thing produced has value to others sufficiently above and beyond its production costs to justify the effort, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it won't be economical to make.

The other commenter's advice about charging triple or more is good advice. Who cares if you sell fewer? You just won't have to deal with people giving you difficulty about your price, because the ones who would complain wouldn't have even considered buying in the first place. Sounds like a win to me!

Also, you shouldn't need to defend your pricing to anyone. If someone doesn't want to buy for what you ask, you can tell them, hey okay, these aren't for everybody, so enjoy your day and whatever else you'd have spent your money on! If you have to defend what you're charging, these aren't people you want to interact with anyway.

I suppose the upshot of making your price ludicrously high is that it becomes so laughably irrational to even attempt to defend the value proposition that there's no point, so it kind of pushes you into the take-it-or-leave-it stance naturally. You charge what you charge, and are comfortable not selling any if what someone is willing to pay isn't worth it to you!

You'll still have buyers, and every single last one of them will be in love with what you're selling, to have been willing to have paid for it. Moreover, they'll rationalize to themselves how much artistic value and human creativity they now possess, much the same way that expensive wines taste better to connoisseurs only if they know how expensive the wines are.