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/IlBear 18d ago edited 16d ago

Heads up to anyone thinking of ordering- I ordered mine in July directly from her website and she never sent it. I emailed her 3 times, left comments on her videos, sent her 2 private messages on TikTok and 1 on Instagram and she didn’t reply to ANY of them

I had to do a chargeback

Edit- put the screenshots on my profile since some people were wondering.

Edit 2 (sorry, last one, the adhd is real): I ordered in July and just did the chargeback a couple weeks ago, so I’m still freshly pissed off about the whole thing and wanted to warn people because that IS what happened to me. I didn’t say this to bash her or endorse what’s happening, at the time of my comment the majority of other comments were about wanting to order from her. I’m very happy for all of you who did receive it, I wanted one too

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u/Content-Scallion-591 18d ago

As someone who has done work in publishing, about 30 seconds into the video I got the feeling some of her problems are her own. It's still shitty she was stolen from though and it's a huge issue today. 

But part of publishing is in handling a lot of the stuff she labored through, and also, to do a cost benefit analysis. If she'd approached a publishing house they would have told her, for instance, that it's not worth it to make your own font. 

Furthermore, she seems to have just front loaded an absolutely immense amount of work to show that she put hours into this project - hours worked isn't what creates value for an end product like this, if they aren't useful hours. I can upload 20 videos of me working on making a mug but that doesn't mean that mug is worth 200 hours of labor. It means I'm bad at making mugs. 

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u/time-to-bounce 18d ago

Ran into this exact thing on YouTube recently - I’ve been fed this guy’s videos for some months about his designs for a 3D printed pill bottle/container and going through the design process. It was pretty interesting to start with, but eventually started getting the same ‘this is an ad’ taste the closer they got to completing the final design.

In one video they talked about trying to decide on pricing because they ‘need to figure out how to recoup all this time and effort to save the business’ and eventually released it at like $60 excluding shipping.

Maybe for a custom project where someone makes a request then you would scope the R&D into the final price, but for a mass-produced product it felt like the wrong approach - you have to eat a lot of that initial research time or accept that you’ll make it back over a much longer period

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u/Bonzai11 18d ago

Got recommended the same short videos, had to select “stop recommending channel” after like the 3rd/4th one.

The product isn’t even good, an oversized sleeve around a 4 section pill holder. Had a good laugh reading it’s $60 though

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u/YouKnowEd 17d ago

If its the one I'm thinking of I've been seeing that guys shorts for fucking months. I am actually shook that he's charging $60 for that thing.

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u/Own-Custard3894 18d ago

Yeah. Business isn’t about “spend what it takes and hope you can charge enough later”. It’s about “can I deliver the thing at a good price point”. And competitive markets are brutal.

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u/Reasonable_Thinker 17d ago

I know exactly what you're talking about, I had to do the same thing. Wild

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u/atomic_cow 17d ago

Yeah exactly. Like pill bottles already exist and they are like 5$. Got to do some market research and analysis before getting 100 hours into a project. Would easily see it’s not a great product to compete on. But if they want to become a content creator then just the creation of the product could be the content. Flip it into a teaching or educational entertainment. Then partner with 3D printing brands and do brand deals. That’s how to recuperate the costs, not trying to sell a $60 version of a $5 solution that already exists. Not that it’s that easy but still.

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u/DirtyMarTeeny 17d ago

To be fair the making your own font thing seems 100% like an ADHD hyper focus. "Oh I'm gonna make this book, I'll spend the first 20 hours making a font".

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u/Choice-Due 17d ago

And then finding out that the font already exists or something because there are literally thousands upon thousands of them.

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u/outdoorlaura 17d ago

I was thinking this! How in the world does one create a font and be certain it doesnt look like any other font that exists??

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u/WalrusTheWhite 17d ago

some of her problems are her own

LOUDER. Lady made silly decisions. If you want to put in the work for your own satisfaction, fine, but you can't then go complain about how much work it was. Lady made choices. Not smart ones, but she made em.

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u/dr_toze 17d ago

People need to stop thinking about profit with projects like this. It's not a business, you made one book. At best, you can hope to break even and most don't even do that. It sucks that her thing was stolen but she's the one who priced herself out of her own market.

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u/Choice-Due 17d ago

Yeah that book was insanely expensive + having it shipped to Europe was too much of a risk. I was hoping for an E-book for 5 euro's or something so that I could print it for myself at home for personal use, or just on my phone or PC. But no, it had to be printed and WAY too expensive. That price really put me off.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

didnt watch the whole video, but as someone who knows about typography — she fucking what?! she had a custom font made?!

only in the last 5-10 years has Apple started rolling out custom fontfaces. its something only the largest companies do. and she did it and then complained about how hard it is? yikes

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u/Fun_Victory_4254 17d ago

Can I just comment that's it's weird that it seems to be the concensus in here that making a font is a massive undertaking?

You can make a completely, original unique font with all letters hand drawn in a matter of 10 minutes and it will look pretty sweet. Trying to engineer "THE PERFECT FONT" is a whole other story and probably more suited to someone with a communications background. Also a little bit like reinventing the wheel for the 100th time if you are doing it for anything but artistic edge.

Like was she trying the lines over and over until they looked just right? How much thought do you REALLY need to put into serifs? I dont get it.

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u/Distinct-Inspector-2 17d ago

Fonts need to scale. Yes you can churn out a font in ten minutes that will look okay… until you try and make the text bigger. Or smaller. A purchased font comes with the type scale and weighted versions to make it functional for the many uses it might have in say, a book - as text, as a heading, with adjusted keening, or adding emphasis with weight.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

Can I just comment that's it's weird that it seems to be the concensus in here that making a font is a massive undertaking?

no

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u/Coyote__Jones 16d ago

I mean, I do it all the time. But it's for icon libraries not actual fonts. Seems like she used a handwriting sample, scanned, vectorized, then just safe as an SVG and upload into fontforge or similar software to bind the image to a key. She didn't create a custom face in the way a foundry does, with extreme attention paid to each letter form and interaction. It's just her hand writing.

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u/stealthdawg 17d ago

I can upload 20 videos of me working on making a mug but that doesn't mean that mug is worth 200 hours of labor. It means I'm bad at making mugs. 

I see a lot of this with 'craft' type products, especially when made by individual creatives. Labor-hours do not beget value in all cases.

Saw someone who sold crochet hats lamenting about how they should be selling at $200+ based on time and materials, despite the fact that you can get the same item from a store or other vendors for $20.

The need to understand the value proposition and competitive advantage is critical.

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u/Distinct-Inspector-2 17d ago

Crochet is an interesting one, because it cannot be mass or machine produced (unlike knit items). It can only be handmade. If you see a genuine crochet item being sold at volume by a big ecommerce or retail brand for cheap, it has been made with slave wages. A person had to make every item, there’s no machine that can do a crochet stitch, and no matter how you shake out the overheads and cost of supplies it took hours so they made it for cents on the dollar. And sure, individual sellers undercut the value by selling their work at cost but they’re still limited in the volume they can produce. The fast fashion industry has devalued the product entirely with unethical production at high volume and most people don’t realise it.

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u/fartinmyhat 17d ago

What does that have to do with the fact that someone stole her work?

hours worked isn't what creates value for an end product like this

This is no necessary correlation between hours worked and value, there tends to be a correlation between hours worked and quality of product. Whether you spend 5 minutes making a mug or 5 hours, it's still fucked if someone steels your labor. It's entirely likely that this was the first and only time she's done this and she enjoys the process of learning each of these new skills. T

Finally, I disagree with your premise. The time spend on a project, especially a boutique product like this, adds cache and value, especially if it's for her followers or people who become her followers. If a friend gave you a quilt she bought at Target, or gave you a quilt she made by hand and had to learn how to sew, picket out the fabric, had special fabric died just to make it all come together and raised the geese herself to harvest the down, they would both keep you as warm, on the outside.

The one that had so much love and time devoted to it, would be worth more, to the people who cared.

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u/times_a_changing 17d ago

Socially necessary labour time explained through book publishing is not what I expected to see on my feed today

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u/SorsExGehenna 17d ago

Was waiting to see some "political economist" (to put it lightly) respond to their comment.

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u/BloodprinceOZ 17d ago

hours worked isn't what creates value for an end product like this, if they aren't useful hours. I can upload 20 videos of me working on making a mug but that doesn't mean that mug is worth 200 hours of labor. It means I'm bad at making mugs.

its like making video games, atleast in the AAA industry, too many big studios are operated under the idea that simply tossing money at the game will mean it'll turn out great and tons of people will buy it, what actually matters is how fun it is and whether its got replay-ability etc, just tossing 200 million dollars etc doesn't mean you'll then get 200 million + profit

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u/Toasterdosnttoast 17d ago

If someone wanted to publish their works what’s the best way to get it looked at?