If you are a romance writer with the word “Cocky” in one of your titles, and you’ve received a takedown notice from author Faleena Hopkins, please check out this Twitter link on this bullshit.
Have you heard yet? (possibly, it’s all over my FB and twitter)
Oh look,
Faleena is back at her bullshit. One of my friends had her work removed from Amazon and was issued a copyright notice from Hopkins because their plots were “too similar”. The similarities where that their man characters drank red wine, and featured vampires.
She’s on my shitlist for authors to never rec or review.
Blacklist this author.
Also, if you publish with a non-US publisher, she can’t touch you.
I’d also like to add that the owner of a certain author group on Facebook deleted someone else’s post about the trademark issue, and then Faleena was encouraged by the mods to tell “her side of the story” but she turned off commenting on the post, and then one of the mods wrote vague posts ranting about people PMing him for liking Faleena’s post so now he’s blocking people who disagree with him, and they turned off posting for the rest of the weekend.
Let me know if you want me to post the screenshots.
Post them, this woman and anyone that side with her need to be publicly shown as the scum they are. This whole trademark thing is bullshit, she’s taking advantage of it, so I imagine her books are not very good.
@thebibliosphere and @caitlynlynch, can you please reblog if you feel comfortable? Below I have screenshots about how some of Faleena’s author friends have reacted:
Michael Anderle created the Facebook group 20BooksTo50k and his friend Craig Martelle is one of the mods. A post about the trademark issue went up a few days ago, and this is what happened:
Then Faleena Hopkins went on with her BS excuse on several FB groups, you can find them on Twitter, and it’s too long for me to bother posting on here, but when someone commented that she shouldn’t bring it up in the group, she said that the mods urged to show her side of things.
Now I wanted to brush this off and pass it off as her lying, but then:
Craig Martelle has to start acting like your average rich straight white male who gets criticized. Then he went on to do this:
Now you see, Faleena Hopkins was a guest speaker at the 20Books conference last year, and I’ve heard that she’s a friend of theirs. If they keep her on, I completely understand. That’s the only conference invite she’ll ever get again, and they’re just looking out for their friend.
However, being a whiny tantrum stomping little child on a FB group is just unnecessary. Own up to your fake rules:
Faleena Hopkins was going after other authors after she trademarked a common word. There’s no defending that, and they’re shutting down all conversation about it except for her side of the story and booting people from the FB group. Sucks for them because all the other writing groups are talking about it and mocking them for their reaction to all the bad press Faleena is getting.
Also, shame on them for deleting important indie information the original trademark post had and refusing to let people talk about it while vague posting rants about it. But what else do you expect from rich straight white men, who aren’t really oppressed like a good portion of the romance industry is, that have to face valid criticism?
The RWA and one or more Big 5 Trad Pubs are involved now. There’s a time to stand up for your friend, and there’s a time to let them know the consequences of their actions.
Reblogging for information, because this is some fucked-up shit.
Also a case study in How Not To Get Ahead As An Author.
I honestly think the only thing Faleena Hopkins can do now is go dark, start a new pen name, and never show her face at any conferences in case someone connects the two. Otherwise she’s going to find herself standing alone in the corner a lot.
This is something that’s been going down in Romancelandia, and it definitely is something to watch if you are an author or want to be an author anywhere. If this Trademark stands, expect other commonly used words like Baby, Billionaire, Bastard, Lover, Dragon, Mystery, etc. to get swooped up by unscrupulous businesses who will then go after everyone in something akin to Patent Trolling/Jacking.
As someone who has been on the other side where I’ve had to defend a mark (Welcome to the world of large conventions, including one where our registered and branded name is used in a video game with our permission for certain favors from said company) I understand her concern about people getting confused and her anger at people targeting her books to sell theirs. (Which is so a thing and frankly fine… ever hear of comp titles?) But that being said, she wasn’t the first to come up with the idea, that word is not unique, nor does it pertain to titles… Series yes. Individual book titles no.
What she’s done is she’s using the fear of losing a lawsuit to bully her peers to gain more exclusivity and discoverability.
She’s also not doing things legally. I literally just went through a defense of IP and Trademark this year with one of the cons I work for. There were steps we had to take as the plaintiff that she’s not taking. Like actually having a lawyer send these notices via multiple formats to confirm delivery and receipt. Because you need to have a chain of evidence and a chain of “no really I tried to work with them” otherwise you’ll get laughed out of court. Additionally you have to have concrete proof that you are losing money and that there is reasonable confusion/harm to your brand by this. Since there are titles that pre-date her series that were and are bestsellers, the argument can be made that she is the person who is profiting from others.
In all, this is a mess. A huge mess. And the results are going to be affecting the writing world for a while.
As for her. I pity her. She’s managed to get E.L. James and Anne Rice (two authors known for vigorously defending their brand) saying she’s in the wrong as well as spreading the word about who to contact.
Well… this pretty much says it all.
She has a few friends, but as they come out publically supporting her, they themselves will lose support. As they should. This a time where it doesn’t pay to be on the wrong side of history.
And I’m gonna add my own two cents worth of opinion on the purported ‘takedown notice’ she’s sending out, one petty: that’s a writer? Damn, dude, that’s some shitty damn writing. And one technical: if she actually did receive legal advice I’m pretty sure she can kiss her privilege goodbye.
Katherine Crighton 