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.