It’s come to my attention that someone is trying to sell copies of my e-books – Hair Care Products and Formulating Facial Products – for $50 US, which is much much more than you’d pay on my blog!
Did you know that every single penny we receive for the big five e-books – Lotion Making 101, Back to Basics, Hair Care Products, Formulating Facial Products, and Formulation Lotions & Creams – goes to support our free weekly youth groups, Rated T for Teen, a program Raymond and I have been running since 2005. Your purchase goes to pay for craft supplies, board games, card games, food, transportation, guest instructors, rent, and everything else we need to keep it all going. (We also supported a senior dog shelter for 2 months in 2018.)
$50 US = $66 Canadian. If you purchase the ebooks directly from me, you’ll get *both* for $53 Cdn and have enough for an ezine or a monthly subscription! You’ll not only be supporting programs for youth with the e-books, you’d also be supporting the blog so I can continue to offer you safe, stable, professional formulas and way too many posts about ingredients, equipment, and products.
Thieves can be pretty cool in Dungeons & Dragons – we also offer weekly groups for that game, too – but they suck in real life. Don’t support those who steal or plagiarize – support creators!
From my Instagram account: I’d like to introduce you to some of the youth (and Raymond) from whom that thief selling my ebooks at twice the price was stealing. Every penny made by my five big ebooks goes to support our free weekly youth programs – called @ratedt4teen – and they were so disappointed and angry that someone would do this to them. Before you think of stealing from them again, take a look at their faces – are you really okay pocketing money intended for their programs? Thieves are only cool in D&D! #stopthieving #getyerownebooks #dontbuildbusinessesontheft
Sadly, this has become rampant in the DIY community, DIYers copying the work of others and calling it their own, selling other people’s work, or giving away paid work to bolster their own reputation.
How hard is it to cite your sources! Seriously, look at the way I’ve linked all the works I used for my STEPANQUAT® Helia series – part one and part two – because I should give credit to those who shared their knowledge. But also, as someone pointed out yesterday, sharing sources bolsters one’s position and demonstrates there’s support for the argument beyond one’s own opinion. Just a tiny link is all it takes!
So here’s the part I guess I have to write – buying my e-books, subscribing to the blog, or taking a class with me doesn’t mean you can sell my written work, turn it into a post or article, use great swaths of it without crediting me, or pretend the formula is yours to sell in your Etsy shop or share on a blog. If you’re in doubt, ask me if it’s okay.
My former awesome boss John always said we should never waste a good crisis, so I think this is a good time to talk about things like ownership and citations and everything else. When is a formula really yours? Let’s talk about that in a new post I hope to write shortly.
Update: She claims her backpack was stolen and her computer was logged into her Facebook account, so “whoever was selling that was not me”, which seems very likely, right?