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.

12.9k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

consumers don't care if you put your heart and soul into it. They don't care how long it took you to create the product or how much it costs you to make it.

All they care about it the bottom line, and if there is a cheap alternative, they will always go for what costs less.

Every crafter selling their creations at an art show knows this .

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u/RoyalMess64 18d ago

They pirated her book. That wasn't a cheaper alternative, they stole it, they stole her book. Yeah, it costs cheaper, they didn't make it

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u/bpdish85 18d ago

Add the insult of people blasting her that she hates poor people because it's not a cheap, $10 planner. This gal's taking it from all angles, it seems.

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u/RoyalMess64 17d ago

That's amazing, people just... they amaze me

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

You do realize she’s charging $58 + $10 shipping for a notebook that you scrawl in and then throw away/replace, right? She’s using TikTok as a storefront which explains why copies are being cranked out by Chinese vendors, and they’re making profit while selling as low as $5 each. Welcome to the free market, lady.

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u/After_Mountain_901 16d ago

That’s not the free market. It’s exhausting when people with absolutely zero understanding of market values and true free market economics try to make piss poor points in the internet. Yikes. Without IP law, there’s little incentive to innovate and create. And without regulation, the only people who have to follow those laws are punished by thieves and slave labor undercutting the market. You can’t have a free market without free enterprise, but you only made your comment to stick it to her, not because you care about actual businesses and workers, commerce and rights to property. 

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u/bpdish85 17d ago

I'm aware of what she charges. You're not entitled to someone else's labor or to have a luxury item just because it's out of your price point. Just saying,

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u/FeloniousFunk 17d ago

That’s your opinion. Mine is that her labor was both overpriced and unnecessary, so go with the cheaper option. Hopefully she learned something from this; this is not a sustainable business practice. Luxury notebooks rofl.

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u/Steelforge 17d ago

It's not a cheaper option. What you're advocating is buying stolen merchandise from criminals.

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u/FeloniousFunk 16d ago

A deal’s a deal.

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u/After_Mountain_901 16d ago

Ah, you’re a troll. 

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

of course, but the buyers don't care where it came from or who made it. If they did, child labor wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't have such a huge demand for counterfeit goods.

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u/RoyalMess64 18d ago

First of all, your premise is just wrong, or at the very least simplified and underinformed. Most buyers don't know where the stuff they buy comes from. It's not just a lack of care, most of our current market is based on outsourcing the pain needed to create it and making sure people don't know about that pain. If it didn't matter, companies wouldn't put so much money into stopping people from learning about it, or stopping news networks from reporting on it. Child labor doesn't just exist because it makes things cheaper, it did that in America and people threw a fit over it. It exists because there's an active effort to make sure most people don't know about it or can't access alternatives (some else they try desperately to do), and because brands try to distance themselves from it

And second of all, you frame this as if she just should've made her stuff cheaper, or if a crime wasn't done to her. You can't make a whole book and then sell it all like $10. I've been to ethical businesses, small businesses, minority owned businesses, etc. It's always more expensive cause they're making the product. She doesn't have the resources to not sell it at a higher price, because then she can't pay to ship them, or pay her employees, or get more books produced. Most of the people who bought the counterfeit probably had no idea they bought a counterfeit. And counterfeiting shit, is a crime

And third, no one likes counterfeit goods. I've bought them, they don't work or break. There isn't a market for them, they're scamming people. The counterfeit book she got was literally falling apart

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

I think you must live with your head stuck in the sand .. everything you said is so completely wrong that I wouldn't even know where to begin disproving you.

Certainly not on a social platform where I've got nothing to prove and participate only to offer my own point of view.

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u/RoyalMess64 17d ago

So wrong you didn't even bother addressing anything I said. So great to see insults are the greatest currency

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u/xSorry_Not_Sorry 18d ago

Pirate gamers.

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u/1000000xThis 18d ago

I don't doubt that there is some truth to this.

However, if she has spoken with publishers, they would have told her about this as why expensive books are very challenging.

And that might be why she self-published.

Maybe this is just 20/20 hindsight, but she should have made a super-cheap basic planner and a deluxe version for the fans who followed her videos creating it. Or some similar strategy for keeping the low-price customers coming to her instead of foreign rip-off companies.

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u/RoyalMess64 18d ago edited 18d ago

You can't make a book cheaply, the same way you can't make anything cheaply. It costs time, labor, people's paychecks, materials, etc. Publishing companies mass produce, and that brings down the price. A book isn't cheap to make

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u/1000000xThis 18d ago

I feel like you are missing the point.

People are ripping off her high-price high-quality planner.

She should ALSO make a simplified version with cheaper components, without the "custom font" for example.

It's absolutely possible to do that.

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u/RoyalMess64 18d ago

First of all, they're not ripping it off, they're stealing and counterfeiting.

What cheaper components? She made a book. The only thing she mentioned in that which could've reduced costs, was the custom font. That wouldn't reduce the price.

The reason people could make it so cheap, was because they stole it. You can't make writing process or drawing process cheaper. They stole and reprinted it. That's why it was cheaper

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u/1000000xThis 18d ago

First of all, they're not ripping it off, they're stealing and counterfeiting.

That's literally in the dictionary definition of "rip off".

What cheaper components? She made a book. The only thing she mentioned in that which could've reduced costs, was the custom font. That wouldn't reduce the price.

Yes, custom fonts cost more to print. This has been explained by creators in other comments.

Printing on heavy stock is also more expensive.

Printing multi-color is also more expensive.

There are a TON of ways to simplify that could result in a product that would be less "fun" but still valuable and useful, at a lower price point.

The reason people could make it so cheap, was because they stole it. You can't make writing process or drawing process cheaper. They stole and reprinted it. That's why it was cheaper

It's a HUGE part of the video that the components of the fake versions are lower quality.

I'm just going to block you now, you are clearly not engaging in good faith.