How to Alienate Your Readers and Tank Your Career - Monday Musings
So over the weekend, there was an unholy uproar in the romance writing community that spread not only to every other writing genre, but to readers and the general public as well. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Bloggers, and more were all involved and the topic became instantly viral.

Said topic centered around a particular romance author named Faleena Hopkins, who also writes by the pen-name Sabrina Lacey, and has used the name Alicia Burton on social media. This particular author has published thirty titles, 17 of them part of the Cocker Brothers of Atlanta series which all feature a 'Cocky Something' title. She began publishing this series in 2016.

Cocky-something titles in romance have been around for a while. For example: Cocky Jock, a mm porn novel from 1974, Cocky Crew, a mm erotica from 1984 with a completely x-rated cover, Cocky Duke, a romance from 2003, Cocky Prince, a romance novel from 2004, Cocky Stepbrother, a romance from 2012, all the way to Cocky Bastard, a romance novel from 2016, among many others. 

So, now that we've established that cocky titles are a commonplace in romance, I'll get to the uproar from this past weekend.

See, Friday evening, word got out that an author was sending Cease and Desist letters to other romance authors, claiming she had trademarked the word 'cocky', to be used in a romance novel title, and that they had to change their titles immediately or she would file suit and win. Not only win, but have her lawyer fees paid for by the 'offending' author and be awarded all the profits they made from that title. She only targeted self-published, indie, and small-press authors, who wouldn't have the funds or a big publishing company to fight the trademark claim in court. The alarm went up, thanks to a few authors who received C&D letters.

There's a few reasons why this caused such an uproar in the romance community.

1) You legally can't trademark common-use words. Not in the way the author was claiming. Take Apple for example. They trademarked the word only in context of electronic products. They couldn't trademark the word in a general sense. She managed to be granted the trademark for the common word when sued in any romance title. This never should have been granted.

2) She sent C&D letters to authors who published cocky titles BEFORE her trademark was granted, which should have been 'grandfathered' in so the trademark wouldn't apply to them.

3) She sent letters to authors claiming they needed to change their titles and that it would only take them a day to do, not cost them any money of profit loss, and that they would be able to keep their ratings and reviews on Amazon, all of which are lies. Changing a title after publication is a big deal. Covers cost money, anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. They can take days, weeks, or months to create. If they had any promotional material printed: banners, bookmarks, t-shirts, etc. they'd have to throw them in the trash and pay for new ones. You can't change a title post-publication on almost every publishing site without creating an entirely new edition. It's a completely new book and you lose all your ratings and reviews.

3A) The same author filing C&D's and claiming changing the title was easy had one of her own books with a title mistake. The book in question is 'Cocky Soldier', and features a Marine. The author discovered during research that Marines are NEVER referred to as soldiers, always a Marine. So her title was not only incorrect, but insulting to Marines. She was made aware of this, before publication, but refused to change her cover. There's even a forward in the novel stating she knew about the mistake but because it would cost her money and she'd lose all her pre-orders changing the title, that she decided it was too difficult and kept the title as-is. So this author, who is now demanding other's change their titles and claiming it's an easy feat, couldn't even do the same thing herself when shown an actual mistake in titling her novel.

4) She claims her readers were 'confused' by other titles with cocky in them. She basically said that her readers are too stupid to be able to read HER name, also clearly stated on the cover, and were accidentally buying other author's books. Even if her readers are this stupid, all buying platforms have return options for such cases. The author has stated that this was her primary reason for filing for a trademark: her readers are too stupid. Or so she claims.

5) Her second trademark was to register the word 'cocky' in the stylized form she uses on the titles in her series. This one doesn't bother anyone, as specific fonts end up being a logo and well-recognized part of such a big series. The only problem in this particular case is that the style she trademarked BELONGED TO SOMEONE ELSE. The font was designed by an artist, belongs to a company, and was already copyrighted and trademarked. The owner of the font has been notified and will be contacting his lawyer when he returns from vacation. Someone failed to do their research.

6) When some of the C&D letters failed to get her desired responses, she began to leave 1 star reviews on the 'offending' author's books, only to leave another C&D request as the actual review. Then she had her 'most faithful' readers begin leaving 1 star reviews saying the authors were stealing her work.

So, that's the basics of what began one of the romance world's most spectacular uproars. Once word got out of the situation, romance authors and readers began doing their research, discovering the sketchy legal grounds and the sketchy actions of the author. They began gathering evidence and support against the author. Lawyers, who also happened to be authors, began building cases against her. The RWA, the romance world's biggest organization began investigating. The big 5 publishers caught wind and set their very expensive lawyers on the case. A writer/lawyer filed a petition to revoke the trademark today. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here's a few reasons WHY it's such a big deal.
1) Being granted a trademark for such a generic and commonly used word sets a horrible precedence for writers everywhere, and not just in the romance genre. What happens when someone decides to trademark the word 'his', 'love', 'surrender', 'heart', etc. There won't be any titles left. Authors will be suing each other left and right and the entire industry will collapse.
2) Authors don't go after each other. We just don't. We're all in this together, especially indie authors, who don't have the money or resources that traditionally published authors have. To have another author blatantly go after colleagues in such a bullying, selfish, and illegal way is disheartening and upsetting.

Am I saying "Don't buy books from this psycho author?" I wish I could, but that's setting myself up for a defamation lawsuit. Feel free to buy her books, you might even enjoy them. But remember that she went out of her way to impact the entire writing world because 1) she thought her readers were dumb 2) she wasn't confident enough in her own work that she couldn't share even a partial title with another author. 3) She used shady legal practices with questionable legality to accomplish her goals. 

The author has effectively derailed her career with her antics. Readers, not appreciating being called stupid, deleted her books. Publishers, writing groups and conferences, news outlets, etc. began dropping her as a member and speaker. She tried claiming that she was being bullied by the writing community for trying to protect her brand but the writing community and readers weren't having it. I wouldn't be surprised if her name disappears from publishing as well as her cocky books that caused such an uproar to begin with. But time and the legal system will be the judge of that.