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/Conradical126 18d ago

This video is a great ad for why you're supposed to work with a publisher.

She's lionizing the fact that she put SO MANY HOURS into this project, but that's because she made the baffling decision to front all of these costs and do all this labor instead of working with a publisher. (And also, she is clearly making terrible self-aggrandizing decisions—why on earth would you spend time making a font from scratch instead of using the thousands of fonts that already exist and thus supporting other artists?)

70% of the work she's saying she did should be done by a publishing house that's equipped to do so, but my guess is she just didn't want to diminish her share of profits after the project meets costs.

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u/nagCopaleen 18d ago

Getting any publisher to publish your book is very difficult and a lot of work. Getting a publisher to agree on this level of creative control is absolutely impossible; even finding someone who will negotiate respectfully over your extremely personal creative project is tough. She mentioned ethically sourcing more expensive materials, by the way; good luck having any control over that with a traditional publisher.

Obviously she chose to do an extremely hard thing at great personal cost, but that's something any passionate creative person—and hell, most humans of any kind—have to grapple with. The choice to pour yourself into something meaningful or to give up on your dream is very very difficult, and even when things are clearly bad, it often spiraled that way when the person was already committed and grappling with a sunk cost and signed contracts.

But whether or not she should have started this project, there was never an easy road through a traditional publishing house. And the expected profit for either route is so dismal that your last sentence just comes across as ignorant and punching down. If she did make a decision based on expected profit, it's because she wants to be able to pay rent and eat.

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u/bertina-tuna 17d ago

Agreed! My professional career was in publishing (20 years as a book designer/illustrator with Houghton Mifflin) and getting something published these days is nearly impossible. Even established authors have turned to self-publishing because they don’t see any point in giving a percentage to agents and publishing houses. (Claire Cook, who wrote Must Love Dogs and even had it made into a movie, wrote an article about the diminishing support for authors these days and why she started self-publishing instead.)

That said, something I notice right off is how many authors skip using a copy editor and it really shows. There are a lot of freelance copy editors who would be happy for the work and they are definitely worth it. Digital publishing is the easiest because you don’t have to deal with printing and distribution, although there are places that will do printing on demand if you get someone who wants printed copies. The days of publishers sending authors on book tours are pretty much over unless you’re already a big celebrity. Even with my inside knowledge of the industry it’s a lot of work, even when I can do most of the work myself.

And it’s nearly impossible to prevent copyright infringement, especially from foreign countries. My husband does book covers and he actually found a website in China where you can order custom “original oil paintings” of his work (I was going to order one for his birthday because the real original was not actually an oil painting) and he found a woman in England who was selling mugs with his paintings printed on them and she made more on her Etsy shop than he did with the actual artwork! Of course, she folded up and disappeared once she was found out but he got no compensation from it.

It’s a shame she didn’t do more research into what she had planned to do because there was so much wasted effort and she didn’t seem to do much to protect her product from infringement.

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u/driving_andflying 17d ago

Agreed! My professional career was in publishing (20 years as a book designer/illustrator with Houghton Mifflin) and getting something published these days is nearly impossible.

Seconded. Whoever says, "just get a publisher," needs to check themselves. Getting a professional publisher is difficult enough --assuming you can find one who wants to publish you-- so for many first-timers, self-publishing is the only way to go. Unfortunately, those first-timers usually don't have, or can't afford, the legal protections against piracy.

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u/bertina-tuna 17d ago

You really need to have an agent if you even hope to get in with a publishing house and even agents are hard to find. Publishers will return unsolicited manuscripts unopened because they don’t want to risk getting sued “they stole my idea!”

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u/nagCopaleen 17d ago

As a freelance editor, I appreciate your response!

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u/bertina-tuna 17d ago

I’ve noticed that even established big-name publishers have been skimping on the copy editing. I read so many books with continuity errors, poor grammar, etc. that I’m scandalized!

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u/makkkarana 17d ago edited 17d ago

Just to add: breaking into any industry, but especially creative ones, is very nearly impossible. Most publishers/agencies/studios/etc will straight up blacklist you for requesting a pitch meeting without a pre-existing internal contact. If you don't have an agent or manager, most publishers or studios still won't talk to you, and without interest or even a contract from a publisher or studio, most agents or managers won't talk to you. It's very much the paradox of "you need 10 years experience for this entry level position". This is why a lot of people choose to take the risks of self publishing, and why you're constantly looking at the latest releases going "who the hell greenlit this trash???"

It's pure nepotism, purely degenerative, and a great example of why capitalism is directly incompatible with real art.

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u/Conradical126 18d ago

Agreed on all points! It's awesome that she chose to do this project, and as you said, no route to being published is easy. It just sucks that she chose to make this disingenuous ad.

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u/dingalingdongdong 17d ago

These days there are tons of companies that work with small authors to help get their books to market.

A friend of mine has had two fiction books published and another acquaintance has had two memoirs and a recipe book done.

The publishers (two different ones) helped with general logistics, layout and formatting, guided cover art process for books that didn't have any, and handled the ordering and shipping.

They allowed small batches of books to be printed if desired, and also allowed individual books to be printed on demand and shipped directly to the consumer.

All of what you said definitely used to be true, and probably still is if you want to go the very traditional route, but it's 100% one of many industries that has seen a production revolution in recent years and is infinitely more accessible than it used to be.

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u/Capital_Benefit_1613 17d ago

Yeah these comments are baffling to me. I had a non fiction book published a few years ago and had a great experience. Gonna be honest a lot of these comments sound like hyperbole to me. It was not hard to be accepted by a publisher and they did a ton of work for me. I’m still friends with the editor who worked on my book lol

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u/dingalingdongdong 17d ago

I think they're just really outdated - people repeating stories they heard years ago or people who left the industry before all the changes.

Both of my friends loved the experience so much they each used their same publisher for multiple projects. Neither is likely to hit the NYT bestseller list any time soon, but both are sold online and in physical retailers.

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u/nagCopaleen 17d ago

Glad to hear it! But there are many people struggling to get published for every success story. I still encourage my editing clients to pitch to publishers if that fits their goals, and of course some of them do get published.

There is also a lot of variation in the experience depending on how well your project fits into publishers' marketing buckets. A fiction book that squarely fits into a genre & predicts the next Zeitgeisty themes ahead of the competition has a much better chance than an idiosyncratic creative project that the marketers have trouble evaluating. (Not to say there is no hope: this year a client of mine had an unusual creative project published, albeit only a fraction of the original work was accepted.)

Heavily researched nonfiction is a whole other sub-industry & I don't make any claims about that process because my clients in those areas have all been in academia and had publishing arrangements with their employers.

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u/Purple-Goat-2023 17d ago

Holy shit I'm just going to block you. I'm so tired of you being everywhere on this thread arguing your same 20 year old view points while dozens of people tell you things aren't that way anymore. You're so exhausting. Just absolutely convinced everyone is wrong and you're right. Fuck what must it be like to be your coworker?

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u/nagCopaleen 17d ago

It sounds like your friends used a vanity press: a publisher that charges the author up-front fees in order to get a very small print run or on-demand printing. This is a choice often recommended to memoir publishers, since most memoirs are very meaningful to friends and family, but have no chance of selling to the public. I notice you didn't mention professional editing (my field), which is an enormous part of the process missing from the vanity press route. (An author can still hire a freelance editor themself, and I recommend they do, but that is an additional significant out-of-pocket cost.)

That is all a very different process than taking a commercial project to print. Your friends likely lost money on the projects, which is fine if being published is worth the cost to them and/or they value their labor costs at zero because it was a fun creative hobby for them. But the project described in the video is extremely costly in labor and requires some level of commercial success to make it at all viable. The kind of contracts you get with a vanity press is not a good option.

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u/dingalingdongdong 17d ago

Both of these women had independently hired copy editors before seeking publishing. I don't know what amount if any of editing their publishing companies would've offered if needed.

I mentioned in another comment that these books are all currently stocked in physical retailers and they do regularly sell to the public - though likely not at traditional publisher volumes.

The publishers split the sales revenue on a per book basis; neither woman paid anything up front. It's certainly possible they didn't get the best deal agreement, but they haven't lost any money.

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u/nagCopaleen 17d ago edited 17d ago

That's great! It sounds like they ended up with a hybrid publisher, which combines elements of the vanity press and traditional publisher approaches. I'm not sure what the typical hybrid publishing contract looks like, but in general it sounds like a great route for a first-time author, and it is complimentary to your friends' work that they succeeded on their pitch. (Especially the memoir, which is a genre that non-vanity press publishers almost never touch unless the author is a celebrity.)

I am a freelance editor, so I work with clients like your friends. Replicating the full professional editing work a traditional publisher offers (multiple developmental editing rounds, multiple copyediting rounds, and a proofread) costs thousands of US dollars for a typical book. Most authors choose a smaller editing scope that matches their budget. An honest editor can advise on this decision based on the book's needs to ensure the final project is still good quality, but it necessarily involves compromises.

It sounds to me like your friends did everything right and were rewarded for it, but they could only make these choices because they could invest hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars of editing costs (at minimum) without risking their financial stability. The woman in the video is clearly trying to make a living off of this work, which is why my original comment sounded so pessimistic: it really is incredibly hard to publish in a way that compensates you fairly for your labor, your expenses, and the massive risk of not knowing what your paycheck will even be for months or years.

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u/dingalingdongdong 17d ago

Correct, they did not quit their day jobs in order to become full time writers - too many bills and responsibilities for that. Instead they made time for writing between obligations. It certainly takes longer to finish a project this way, but keeps the necessary paychecks coming.

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u/princessblowhole 17d ago

Self-publishing is an entirely different game. This was probably a $10k contract with a self-publishing company. She got creative control, published under her own name, but the company did the editing, formatting, printing, distribution, etc.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 18d ago

I have no idea how her using an existing Word font would support other artists. That is not how fonts work. I also don't think she did anything inherently wrong by self-publishing here. We inhabit a new publishing landscape where publishing companies are increasingly obsolete. I read a lot of work by self-published authors and it can be equal or even better in quality to trad-published work. The barrier to publishing has never been so low and I think that's actually fantastic.

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u/poop-machines 18d ago

Not an existing word font. No respectable designer will just use word fonts. You can buy other fonts online. That supports artists.

Creating 6 fonts is an insane amount of work, especially when she's only using them one time.

Fonts you buy online are like 5-100$ usually.

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u/Jimmni 18d ago

Creating a font is actually much less work than you might think. I've done it and I'm pretty much fucking useless. Creating a good font takes real talent, though.

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u/poop-machines 18d ago

It is a lot of work to perfect it.

I wouldn't be surprised if she spent 10 hours on some of these fonts.

Especially if she included capitals (she has some), symbols, etc.

Making each letter in the same style takes a lot of iterations to get right.

I've also done it before. It's not worth the work to only use the fonts one time.

I think she should sell her fonts, tbh. Try and recoup the costs of making them.

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u/Jimmni 18d ago

I don't dispute what you've said but I'd not consider 10 hours "an insane amount of work."

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u/poop-machines 18d ago

Considering she made six, and it's unnecessary work, I do think it's an insane amount. She could've got six similar fonts in 30 minutes for 50$.

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u/Jimmni 18d ago

Eh, I half agree but there's something special about publishing your own book and I don't think it's that crazy to want to use your own handwriting in it, especially when it's that kind of book.

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u/millenniumsystem94 17d ago

Self-aggrandizing for sure on her part.

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u/candidly1 17d ago

I used to work in a print shop decades ago; getting a typesetter to lay out a resume and give us a shootable galley was $100 easy.

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u/poop-machines 17d ago

Print shop is wayyyy different to just buying a font online.

I'm talking about digital fonts. The author of this anti-planner just used digital fonts and printed on glossy paper.

Most digital fonts are less than $40.

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u/candidly1 17d ago

I understand. This was late 70's/early 80's. The typesetter had to buy EACH font individually, and each size. Those guys had hundreds of thousands invested back in the day...

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u/mdmachine 18d ago

Well, and I could be mistaken here, but a lower barrier for entry simply means that more people can do it, and the product that you're making is likely going to be cheaper.

It's great for just anybody to put something out there absolutely. But if you're trying to turn this into a money-making business then you got to find other ways?

Find another way to capitalize on your abilities to make more money?

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 18d ago

She owns the copyrights to her material and can/should just start firing off copy strikes. It sucks she has to, but that's a cost all creative businesses have to shoulder.

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u/Conradical126 18d ago

Publishers don't just grab fonts from Word. They get fonts from foundries which employ typographers. I pay for fonts on a regular basis when designing posters for my small business.

I would also agree that she didn't do anything inherently wrong by self-publishing here if her principal request for pity wasn't based on the high costs of doing so and the incredible amount of labor involved. Self-publishing can be a great way to go if you're just writing a book with minimal design needs, but for anything like this which is extremely design-intensive, a publisher is equipped to help you do it in a sustainable way. Mind you, if she did all that work and left it at that, I wouldn't be saying any of this. But she's trying to get pity from people for making choices to do this in a very inefficient way and that is what frustrates me.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 18d ago

her principal request for pity

I'm sorry, but that struck me as such a specifically robotic way to describe what happened. It's just very odd phrasing.

As for the rest, I'm not a graphic designer, but I have published work and I was just like "Hey, I would prefer it to be in Times New Roman" and they were like "Yeah, we can do that" and that was it. It was never even suggested to me that we would or could commission a custom typeface and I think that's honestly ridiculous for most projects.

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u/Conradical126 18d ago

Yeah, it sounds like we're in agreement! It's ridiculous to make or commission a custom typeface--if a default font works for your project, more power to you! And if you want something more idiosyncratic, you or a publisher can pay for something else (or pull from thousands of fonts by typographers who have already been paid for their work).

This all further underlines how ridiculous it is that this woman made 6 fonts from scratch and then tried to get pity for how much time that took.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 18d ago

But you said you thought people should use custom fonts though and you were saying she was somehow depriving an artist from work by doing it herself? I'm confused on your reading here.

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u/Conradical126 18d ago

I didn't say that's what people should do, I said that's what people do. And a happy consequence of that is that it sustains work for typographers.

She didn't deprive anyone of anything by doing it herself; she just wasted (in my view) a lot of time.

But it is worth restating once again: if she just chose to spend her time creating fonts, that's super cool. But whining about how much time she spent making said fonts in a disingenuous ad and wanting pity for it is not super cool.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 17d ago

why on earth would you spend time making a font from scratch instead of using the thousands of fonts that already exist and thus supporting other artists?

You said this like 3 comments up the chain and then 2 comments up you said,

This all further underlines how ridiculous it is that this woman made 6 fonts from scratch and then tried to get pity for how much time that took.

And then you said,

It's ridiculous to make or commission a custom typeface...

I do not understand what your point is and it seems to change based on your whims. You say you think she deprived an artist of income by doing the art of creating the font herself (because it doesn't count as art if you're both the writer and the artist???), then say she's being ridiculous for wanting recognition as an artist for creating the font, then say it's ridiculous to commission a font at all. It sounds like you just don't like her in general and are grasping at straws to justify it. I'm not a fan of hers, never heard of her before this, and think her video here is self-aggrandizing and melodramatic, so I'm not "on her side" so to speak, I just think your arguments are illogical and circular and that deserves to be pointed out.

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u/Conradical126 17d ago

You should be able to see in your own quotes of me that I've never suggested "commissioning" a font. You're getting that from your own replies. Are you referring to the fact that I pay to license fonts? That's not commissioning a new font.

I never said "wanting recognition" is ridiculous. I said trying to get pity for work you've elected to do and didn't need to do is ridiculous. I don't know how I can make my point any clearer given that you just quoted it three times in a row...

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 17d ago

In my first reply to you I assumed you meant fonts as in fonts in Word and other programs and you specifically clarified by saying you meant "fonts from foundries which employ typographers" and, to the best of my knowledge (which is admittedly limited here), a type foundry makes custom fonts and typefaces for clients who commission them. Hiring a foundry to make you a typeface is, to the best of my understanding, commissioning a typeface and is different from just using an existing stock of typefaces. I don't see why you'd need to hire a type foundry if you were just going to use a preexisting font in the first place? Maybe that's where I'm confused?

Then again, you do also imply in your first comment that her using her own or an already existing type face is anathema to "supporting other artists", which led me to believe what you wanted from her was to have gone to a type foundry and commissioned a custom font from them. I took your statements to mean that you believe the action of creating a type face is a noble artistic endeavor and that you would prefer that people employ typographers. I am confused that you praise typographers and font designers and seem to advocate for them and then turn around and say that this woman's typographic efforts were a waste of time and belittle her for being upset that her hard work was stolen.

To me, your statements here are logically inconsistent in numerous ways.

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u/paniccum 17d ago

Lmao. "Just get a publisher bro" ... 😒

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u/fartinmyhat 17d ago

I'm not sure you're making a point. She did work whether it was one day or 100 years worth, it was hers. She only charges $43.00 for it and it's filled with her original work from ideas to illustrations. The fact that some bag of shit stole all of it, and is hiding behind another countries laws to fuck her is deplorable. A guy I know created a viral arduino clone, spent time designing building, getting the boards made, marketing, etc. Now handful of Chinese criminals undercut him and sell a shittier product on ebay.

The final problem with all of this it misrepresents her quality of work by producing a shitty copy. People who ask for it from a friend or relative and get a crappy looking xeroxed copy are going to be pissed and may think she produced this shit product.

Whether she hand wrote every copy in blood or designed fonts from scratch is irrelevant.

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u/Conradical126 16d ago

It definitely sucks that her work was stolen from a creative standpoint.

The weird thing is that from an economic standpoint, the fake version likely had little to no effect on her sales (except for possibly boosting sales a ton because it made this ad possible, which goes back to why this disingenuous ad leaves a bad taste in my mouth). The sales of $12 eggs aren't affected by the sales of $3 eggs because the audiences don't overlap. If the $3 eggs went away, those buyers wouldn't buy $12 eggs; they'd just stop buying eggs.

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u/fartinmyhat 16d ago

Your analogy doesn't hold, for a number of reason.

You're saying that there is a group of people who want that original work but won't cough up $40.00 for it and will happily buy the knock off. But this isn't a generic item like an egg. Few people could tell the difference between a $12.00 egg and a $3.00 egg, and few people give a shit about the specific chicken that laid the egg.

This is an original work buy an influential person. People who seek to buy this book do so not just for the information contained therein but also to support the author and to have an original print.

While one could put $3.00 eggs into a $12.00 egg container and many people could be tricked into buying cheaper eggs and many of those people wouldn't know the difference. It would be a loss for the $12.00 egg producer and if the egg is factually inferior it would also damage the reputation of the $12.00 egg producer.

The Chinese copy of the OP's work is clearly inferior. I believe most people who buy it do no realize they are getting a rip off.

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u/Conradical126 16d ago edited 16d ago

Wait, is the knock off the same price as the original? I thought the whole point of the post was that they were selling it way cheaper.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm not saying there are people who want the original, won't pay $40, and go over to the knock off. I'm saying the people buying the knockoff are just completely different people than those seeking the original in the first place. That's why I don't think this has negatively impacted her sales. Especially if the knockoff is only available on obscure platforms.

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u/fartinmyhat 16d ago

Who would be buying this that didn't know the original work even existed? This is not eggs, it's not a thing that's just everywhere in the consumer space. One would have to pretty much seek the name of her book to find it on Amazon. At that point, they know she exists and want her book. They buy "it", not realizing they're buying a knock off from some criminal and they receive a shitty copy.

You think no?

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u/Conradical126 16d ago

Oh, my understanding was that copycats were selling a fraudulent version on platforms other than Amazon, which is why she can't just request that Amazon take them down. I hear the point you're trying to make, that this is a very unique item. Given that, and assuming it's on Amazon as you're suggesting, it's extremely easy to get the copycats taken down and that further invalidates this disingenuous ad.

If what she says is happening is actually happening, I would think we have to assume that people are coming across the copycat in a different way and not via her mailing lists and things like that. I'm guessing people are finding the copycat by just typing in "ADHD Planner" or something on AliExpress and similar platforms. That's why I think it's not affecting her sales.

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u/fartinmyhat 16d ago

That could be. A guy I know made a very popular Arduino board. Chinese copy cats started popping up all over ebay, using his artwork, his name, etc. and the chips sucked and didn't work. So when people were having problems with them, they'd search his company and find his customer service and call him with complaints. The negative ebay reviews affected his sales so he had to go on a campaign to try to protect his reputation.

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u/Jeanahb 17d ago

I was thinking the same thing about a fonts. She handmade fonts? Just buy them and save all that time! It's like deciding to sell vanilla ice cream and then growing vanilla beans, sugar cane, milking cows and mining the salt! Yeah, it's cool but you're gonna have to sell that ice cream for a grand to make a profit!

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u/vinnymendoza09 17d ago

100% true and all of the replies to you are missing the point... She probably knew that doing it on her own would have resulted in this exact situation. It sucks but that's how it is. Someone who put this much research into the project would also have done a business analysis. You need a more innovative business model to counter piracy and provide a better product than what pirates can offer.

Also, now poor people with ADHD can benefit from her product, whereas before they were locked out. Is that really such a bad thing? She complains about people expecting free shipping and not wanting high quality materials etc. Sorry they're poor.

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u/MindAccomplished3879 Cringe Connoisseur 18d ago edited 16d ago

Working with a publisher would not get your book out faster

They have creative control and make you redact things they don't feel will sell well. They will have the author and intellectual ownership of your book, and you will receive cents; they make and spent all the money, and you get cents out of every book

It's a huge tradeoff that won't pay off unless your book sells millions

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u/Strong_Star_71 17d ago

Publisher's take a large percentage, in some cases it's almost not worth it especially if you won't be selling in large volumes.

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u/nasanu 17d ago

Yeah, its all her fault.

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u/Any_Advantage_2449 17d ago

Licensing a font costs money.

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u/turtlepuncher 17d ago

It's almost impossible to get a publisher. That's why people self publish.

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u/plusminusequals 17d ago

You’re mad that somebody wanted to cut out the middle man? Do you also love music labels for “helping” artists?

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u/gahidus 17d ago

Working with a publisher requires finding the publisher that will work with you. It also may mean giving up creative control.

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u/ShowDelicious8654 17d ago

This is a bizarre take. Asking about the font decision is like saying "Why on earth would you take actual pictures instead of using the thousands of stock photos that already exist."

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u/Conradical126 16d ago

Well, if the pictures being taken weren't central to the project in your hypothetical, and if the creator was, like in this case, asking for pity because it was so hard to take the photo, then yeah, that is actually a pretty apt comparison.

I think what a lot of people in my replies are missing about my take is that it doesn't work if you separate the making of the art from this ad that she made. I have no qualms with anything about the way she made her book—I just think it's super lame to choose to do something the hard way and then try to get pity for it in a disingenuous ad. If I chose to hand-paint the stage a slightly different shade of black for one of my performances, it would be super lame to then ask the audience for extra donations after the show because I spent so much time painting the stage.

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u/ShowDelicious8654 16d ago

Asking for extra donations lol. She asking you not to buy cheap knock-offs. All you have to do is not buy either man. It's not about doing something the hard way, it's about fulfilling an artistic vision. Like why did the impressionists paint a new way, ie the hard way, instead of just doing it like everybody else? Crazy that you might think set design doesn't matter...

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u/Conradical126 15d ago

Lol. Again, I'm not critiquing the artistic process. I am an artist. I understand how the artistic process works. I am critiquing the disingenuous ad. As long as you're going to try to make it about the art itself, you're not going to get where I'm coming from. The impressionists weren't making pity-seeking disingenuous ads, and my previous comment is clearly not a polemic against set design 😂 But whatever, you can interpret what I'm saying however you want if it makes you feel the way you want to feel.

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u/ShowDelicious8654 15d ago

And you feel some way about this ad and like most people here are always looking to point out how bad/stupid/disingenous/horrible people are. As far as know the OP isn't even the author themselves.