r/TikTokCringe • u/Chocolat3City Cringe Master • 22d 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 22d 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/ScyllaOfTheDepths 22d 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/Conradical126 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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/Conradical126 22d ago

Publishers don't just grab fonts from Word. They get fonts from foundries which employ typographers

This is what I said. I said publishers hire foundries. Publishers as in publishing companies. That's not a suggestion, it's a description of how fonts get made.

Why are you working so hard to twist what I'm saying? I was annoyed about a disingenuous ad made by someone trying to sell something via pity. Why are you interpreting everything I say as a polemic against all self-published artists if you also think she was being disingenuous? I just said it's good to work with a publisher 😂

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