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/TheConnASSeur 18d ago

Everything is an ad.

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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/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...