HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I love how the C&D letter is used as a selling point on the book's Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Piano-President-Patrick-Wensink...

Unfortunately, it looks like such kindly worded cease and desist orders do not actually produce results, the person here doesn't appear to have changed the cover of the book at all.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1621050203

⬐ LukeShu

That page is for the first edition of the book.

⬐ masklinn

Indeed, here is the second edition: http://www.amazon.com/Broken-Piano-President-Patrick-Wensink...

⬐ codezero

Awesome, thanks for the info.

He still didn't remove the obvious branding ties all over his website, but at least he did change the physical cover, I'm still not convinced it worked out as well as JD would have liked.

And he didn't even change the cover after the C&D: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203

Maybe they should have sent something else than a strongly worded letter.

⬐ jld

They did redesign the cover: http://amzn.to/1436x0J

You can read more about how that story ended here: http://brokenpianoforpresident.com/2012/07/19/jack-daniels-l...

<blockquote>In case you’re wondering, no, my publisher, Lazy Fascist Press, will not be taking them up on their offer. We’re proudly independent and don’t need any of that sweet corporate booze money to redo the cover.</blockquote>

⬐ vl

As requested, they did change cover on the reprint and digital version, you are linking to the first print.

⬐ larrys

I just read the letter from JD and there are many fascinating things about the way it was written including the offer to pay a reasonable amount to re-do the cover.

This is definitely a letter that, prior to the Internet, would never have been written. It goes out of it's way to not appear to be a "dick" and appeal almost in a friend like way to make the person receiving want to do "the right thing" by not making a threat. I've never seen a letter written like this in this situation (having received them and seen many over the years.)

I wouldn't have let an opportunity like this pass. I would have seen what JD would pay to redo the cover, let them do it, and garnered even more publicity. And maybe pocketed some money by subcontracting the labor. The cover design isn't that critical and the extra press mention would most likely drive more sales. As only one example they could have said "it will cost me $5000 to redo" found someone to do it for much much less and pocketed the difference AND gotten more publicity. And I've done things like this is the past with large corporations they will write a check to dispose of a problem they won't say "um we want to have our artist do it". If the price is reasonable they would just pay. (The only question is how much I would have started much higher than $5k that is arbitrary..)

⬐ mcintyre1994

I expect when it came to money actually changing hands, or the deadline of that C&D the tone would change a bit. They'd either have their own interpretation of the vague phrasing of "reasonable amount", or more likely want to see invoices.

⬐ macchina

The producers of Warhammer 40k ought to take note.[1]

"Trademark Bullying" has totally gotten out of hand.[2] Brands have a duty to protect their rights, but a letter like this is really all that's necessary. Good on Jack Daniels. There is no reason to send indie publishers to the poorhouse over trifling infringement.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5176820

2. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/stupid-lawyer-tricks-a...

As an interesting point, there is probably more to having a hit book than just 'bestseller'.

Compare the number of reviews - I assume number of reviews correlates well to number of sales.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203

http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Book-Trilogy/dp/0345...

18,000 vs 21

That's BigBalli's affiliate link. Here's a non-affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621050203