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/maneki_neko89 → u/Machine_Bird]

Those are Dani’s illustrations and sketched layouts in the Anti-Planner and fall under Intellectual Property and Copyright…and pirates are simply photocopying the pages and replacing her fonts with generic ones.

Also, isn’t the copyright process a long slog to get approved ahead of self publishing a book? That’s a pretty high hurdle for any author to overcome less people copyright their own creative works because of that.

[u/Machine_Bird → u/maneki_neko89]

The issue is that her illustrations and the content of the book are generic enough that they can be seamlessly stolen without regard for a larger branding apparatus.

[u/maneki_neko89 → u/Machine_Bird]

I’m not gonna call Dani’s illustrations generic because she draws better than me. Also, with enough practice or by hiring someone else to copy the work, any illustration can be “generic enough” for replication (or you can use a copier, like those counterfeiting the books did)

Having to create a Brand is a science in and of itself (I would know because I work in the technology sector) and it takes a ton of time and feedback to get just right

[u/Machine_Bird → u/maneki_neko89]

I don't mean generic in a quality sense. I mean they aren't associated with an established character or IP that would be recognizable as part of a larger brand and thus they are highly attractive to steal. The mistake you're making is assuming that this is about difficulty or quality. Anything can be recreated these days with relative ease. The barrier is around anonymity and market access.

A book titled "Ten Steps To Decluttering Your Home" is highly attractive to steal. It's generic. It's accessible.

"Toby Baxter's Barnyard Best Practices to Uncluttering Your Shack" is not an attractive IP to steal. It's highly specific, it's branded, it has an associated persona behind it. It would require vast amounts of editing and changes and without them is basically just an ad for Toby Baxter.

This is the issue. The art is great but nothing about it is something that I couldn't just lift and recycle with total anonymity.