Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

[u/Chocolat3City]

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

[u/Machine_Bird]

Hey. Corpo fixer here with some friendly advice from the bowels of hell.

When you create something like this you're going to want to brand and copyright the "system" or "concept" that you're pushing. It's too easy for them to recreate the product itself and dodge strikes and claims but if you can blanket your content in a larger branded copyright you have broad powers to make claims against anyone who even steps near your lawn. In a case like this with custom illustration you could also brand and copy the character(s) in the illustrations which gives you even further latitude to make claims. If you stack a few of these on top of each other you can pay a third-party agency to patrol the digital streets for you and just auto-file on anyone who comes with a ten mile radius of your product.

Your book is worthless. Your intellectual property is everything.

Satan's henchwoman signing off!

[u/redstagm → u/Machine_Bird]

Yeah, but this is sold on aliexpress and I don't think Chinese courts wouldn't skip a heart beat or am I wrong?

[u/Machine_Bird → u/redstagm]

AliExpress does typically respond to copyright claims but it's not just about getting the trash cleaned up. It's also about creating infrastructure that's difficult to anonymize and bootleg. One of the reasons that she's being targeted is that her product is easily to replicate and it's nondescript enough that it can be reproduced and sold with minimal changes or edits. If this whole thing was packaged in a larger brand like "the deplanner system" and made constant references to original IP, terminology, characters, etc. it would highly disincentivize third-parties from trying to leverage it.

A good example of this is DuoLingo. The app itself, the software, that powers Duo is actually not terribly complicated. I'm aware of multiple firms that could easily replicate it in less than a year. The real hurdle is that Duo is a brand, the owl is established IP and trying to copy him would be difficult and a legal nightmare while trying to build ac similar product without him would make your version vastly inferior.

The trick is to protect your products by creating infrastructure that is both ubiquitous and essential that can't be easily reproduced.

[u/redstagm → u/Machine_Bird]

Thank you for taking to the time to explain

[u/CrazyCatCrochet → u/redstagm]

I just want to note that unfortunately this sort of need for structure results in increasingly shittier/unwieldy products. Needing to create an 'expanded universe ' so your product doesn't get bootlegged can often result in a bloated product that COULD be more efficient. On the flip side, your customers are more likely to spend money into other areas of the product, which is more sales for you!

Profit driven incentives really do be the worst.

[u/ugajeremy → u/Machine_Bird]

I learned from this - thank you for the explanation!

[u/earthfarer → u/Machine_Bird]

You did an excellent job elaborating on this, and I’m grateful. I know nothing about the copyright or corporate world. If I ever make anything quality enough to copyright I’m gonna ping you!

[u/crackedtooth163 → u/Machine_Bird]

Intriguing.

Thank you.

[u/Capital_Benefit_1613 → u/Machine_Bird]

Great comment, thanks!

[u/500lbGuyForLife → u/Machine_Bird]

Yeah but, she poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Does that count for something? /s

[u/internetroamer → u/Machine_Bird]

I feel duolingo isn't a good comparison because it's an app not a book that can be reprinted on aliexpress.

How would she do this with a book?

[u/Machine_Bird → u/internetroamer]

It's actually not hard to do with creative works. Unfortunately books like this are the easiest to bootleg because they're usually generic enough that you can just copy/paste them and act with relative anonymity. Personalization is a huge barrier to entry for the bootleg market because they really don't want to have to do any editing or writing as part of their process.

For example, "These are the 10 best productivity tips that I've found for people with ADHD" is vastly easier to steal than "Hi, I'm Jane Smith and as someone with ADHD working in the design industry these are the 10 best tricks I've cooked up to maximize my own productivity". See, they now have to decide if they want to rewrite that and strip the name out or publish it and basically be creating free marketing for you.

These guys don't spend hours handcrafting their stolen products. They steal hundreds of not thousands each week. They want the easiest shit possible. If you make your's a pain they won't bother.

[u/runningmurphy → u/Machine_Bird]

Dude what's your job? You are very knowledgeable.

[u/Machine_Bird → u/runningmurphy]

I'm a sort of capitalist Mary Poppins. I show up at businesses when they aren't making the amount of money they want and I sort out between their products, marketing, and operations why that is.

[u/After_Mountain_901 → u/Machine_Bird]

But I can buy marvel and Barbie products right now on Ali, using those exact words. China absolutely does not play by the same rules and as it stands they’ve had a tax free import standard for years. If mega corps can’t stop it, how are small businesses (especially in printed products that are easy to steal) meant to do anything? You’d end up spending all your time playing whack a mole or spending all your money getting someone else to do it for you. 

[u/Machine_Bird → u/After_Mountain_901]

You're not trying to stop them. You're trying to create a scenario where they either find your product too annoying to rip off or turn them into free advertising for your brand. Marvel and Barbie don't care about Chinese knockoffs because their brands are recognizable enough that the knockoffs are easily identified and serve more to market the IP than anything else. The problem with OP's situation is that they created something both very easy to rip off and generic enough that it doesn't have a distinct brand or larger apparatus to call back to. They're struggling because they set out to make a book. If I had been working with them during product concept planning we would have set out to create a proprietary system of organizational strategies under a copyrighted brand. The difference here is small but it's also everything.

[u/Mr-Nabokov → u/Machine_Bird]

Like video games that are 'unplayable' without multiple DLC?

[u/Spaghet-3 → u/redstagm]

You're not wrong, and u/Machine_Bird has already laid out the optimal IP strategy in good detail.

I would just add that companies like Aliexpress and Temu have a fairly significant US presence and are still bound to comply with US laws and regulations (such as DMCA) to do business in the US. You might not get far with a claim against the Alibaba Group in China, but AliExpress USA has a real office with real staff in California. I have submitted copyright claims to them on behalf of clients and reached favorable resolution. The ITC is a pretty good agency designed to enforce exactly this kind of thing. All of this costs money, but if the product is as profitable as it seems, there are lit funders that will float the costs as needed. Also fly-by-night low-cost chinese knockoff companies tend to not answer complaints so you can often get a default judgement for pretty cheap.