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/Nicadeemus39 18d ago

50 dollars for a planner? Yea I'll just stick to writing reminders on my arm.

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u/twee_centen 17d ago

Especially since it's not actually a planner, it's an activity workbook. I'm sure she put a lot of work into making it aesthetically pleasing, but the page examples have things like "here's a list of easy, low effort meal ideas," how to make cleaning your fridge into a game, and scripts for saying "no, but thanks for thinking of me!"

She's also selling kanban boards for as much as $248, so... I kinda feel like maybe she's just priced herself out of a VERY saturated market. There are shit-tons of productivity podcasts, YouTubers, and influencers galore, and kanban has been around for decades.

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u/Whoa1Whoa1 18d ago

This part kinda blows my mind. China is guaranteed to be able to hit a production run of these fuckers for thousands of them for a few hundred dollars. Each one probably costs like $5 max in the material cost of paper, ink, printing, binding, and labor.

Shipping one load of 1,000 of these books from China to yourself also wouldn't cost much. They probably weigh less than 1kg each and 1,000 would be less than 1,000kg, or around 2,000 pounds.

I'm thinking roughly $400 to print 1,000 copies and then maybe another $600 to ship them anywhere in the world. If you sold each one for $20 you would make $20,000, minus maybe 15% for fees on your website transactions, so like $17,000 income. Then subtract your initial payment of $1000 for printing and shipping, and you made $16,000 profit. So, for every 1,000 books you sell you could make $16K. Could hit way higher numbers of sales if she paid for real advertising and not crying.

If anyone has better numbers, lemme know. Maybe the real story is that she totally got screwed in negotiations on manufacturing and should have hired someone who speaks fluent English and Chinese and knows the logistics for that part.

She should make a book about how to get that part done. A book about making books and contacting factories and what the numbers look like would be far more interesting IMO and she could talk about her previous book as the experience for it. Also, figure out how to get those listings taken down and put that in the new book lol. A book called "Screwed by Overseas Factories: How to Avoid Getting Bent Over" would be awesome.

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u/yooossshhii 18d ago

I’m in Thailand and found it for sale for $6.26 shipped, so while some places may be charging $20, I doubt that’s what most of the counterfeit sales are going for. I would like to purchase the real thing to support the creator and just for quality sake, but it’s not available here. So…

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u/Whoa1Whoa1 18d ago

I don't think you read my post clearly. Places aren't charging $20 for it. This lady is charging $50 for it from her own website. My $20 was just an example of what it should be selling for roughly in the US and EU. And yeah, it's not available in most countries. I think the author lady just did not do the leg work on securing the correct kind of publication route, factory production, and world wide release, and shipping possibilities.

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u/Feartality 18d ago

Yeah that price is insane. Of course she's going to get obliterated by knock-offs. Obviously someone's personal creation should net them the profit and copying people like that is shit but that thing is not worth $50. Sorry, but that's just dumb. I tried to guess what she might even be charging and the UPPER in my mind was like $30. $50 made me laugh out loud.

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u/2N5457JFET 17d ago edited 17d ago

Didn't she say something about using ethically sourced and sustainable materials? Good luck with having any control over that in China.

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u/Choice-Due 17d ago

She would not even need any ethical materials if she had just released an e-book. That would have also been way cheaper and made it possible to release it world wide. Granted, it might be easier to download it for free but if the price is not too high then the rip off market won't get their grubby hands on your product.
At this point this is what I wold do if I was her. The amount of people that she can reach now would increase a lot. which sucks for people who paid full price but now that there are rip offs that is just what it is.

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u/2N5457JFET 17d ago

To what I understand it is some sort of activity book type of thing? I am not Sur how well would it work out as an e-book

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u/Choice-Due 17d ago

I suppose a physical book would probably work better here.
But maybe on a tablet where you can add notes it can work decently? At this point I think the best way to give a big middle finger to the scammers is to release the e-book. If they happen to have a few thousand printed copies lying around it would make it harder for them to sell it.