Episode Description:
In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor dives into the anxiety-inducing topic of account bans and how authors can rebound and rebuild after such a nightmare scenario. Drawing from real experiences and practical strategies, Claire explores the steps authors can take if they find themselves banned from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or even KDP. This episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing this crisis and emphasizes the importance of resilience and adaptability.
Key Takeaways:
Initial Response: Strategies for managing the initial freak-out and immediate steps to take after discovering an account ban.
Appealing the Ban: Tips for reaching out to customer service and appealing the ban effectively.
Acceptance and Adjustment: The importance of practicing acceptance and adjusting your strategy if the appeal doesn't work.
Marketing as Water Flow: Claire's analogy of marketing channels and how to redirect your efforts when one channel is blocked.
Support System: The value of having a support system in place and leveraging the author community during tough times.
Rebuilding Strategy: Practical advice for rebuilding your business and exploring new opportunities, including selling direct or focusing on local markets.
Accountability: Handling the emotional fallout if the ban was due to knowingly breaking terms of service, and the importance of taking accountability.
Why Listen? If you find yourself worrying about the possibility of account bans or if you're currently dealing with one, this episode offers thoughtful and actionable advice to help you navigate this challenging situation. Claire's insights into resilience and rebuilding provide a valuable perspective for any author facing setbacks.
Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram Certified Coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain. Yes, I finally did a redirect link.
That's a little bit cleaner. Okay, so today's episode is going to look at something. Quite nightmarish for authors, actually. I mean, it really raises the heart rate when we even mention it in author circles. I've known plenty of authors who've experienced this, and I have seen some absolute spirals as a result, which is totally understandable, but there's also been enough time since some of these.
You know, catastrophe nightmares happened that I've seen these authors rebound and rebuilt after this terrible thing happened to their business. So [00:01:00] while it may feel like the end, it's not, are you ready? Today, we're going to ask the question. What if my account gets banned? Which account are we talking about?
Instagram, TikTok, even your KDP account. I've seen that happen too, unfortunately. And if you're thinking this could never happen to you because you follow the terms of service everywhere, first, I promise you're breaking terms of service somewhere, somehow without even realizing it, because those are frequently changed and tend to be vague and open to the discretion of the site.
, but also. Number two, I know people who didn't break any terms of service and still ended up banned. That can happen. Am I freaking you out enough yet? Wait, is that not the purpose of this podcast? Oh, right. Purpose is the opposite. To show you that there is no reason to freak out, at least not more than, you know, maybe a day of freak out.
We're all entitled [00:02:00] to, you know, a little something for us, a little, a little day long freak out. It can, it can feel luxurious sometimes. Okay, so I just want to be clear that whenever we're sharecropping on, you know, another site, there is a risk that the land we're working will be taken from us. That's there.
But if you'll allow me to be a big fucking nerd for a second, I want to talk about how we're not actually sharecroppers. We're more tenant farmers. This might seem like semantics, but I'm going to explain the difference here. Um, I spent eight summers attending this thing called Pioneer Farm. It was a camp.
So I might as well use what I learned, right? Uh, and I'm not talking about how to milk a cow or do leather work or whatever. Um, I do know how to do those. I learned how to do those. Among other things. Many other things. I can churn butter. I can do all kinds of things. That will be great when the, uh, when the power grid goes down in Texas.
Anyway, I'll post a picture of those days, , in the show notes if you want to check it [00:03:00] out. Me as a little pioneer. Anyway! Let's talk about the difference between sharecroppers and tenant farmers. So, sharecroppers owned basically nothing and offered up their labor first, relying on the landowner to then sell the crops and then pay the sharecropper for their labor.
Meanwhile, tenant farmers rented the land, they paid rent, and then they used their own tools, their own animals, and other supplies. , they harvested the crops, and then they were in charge of selling the crops, so that they could continue to pay rent. The distinction here is that if tenant farmers were kicked off their land, they got to take their tools with them.
And they learned the skills of selling their harvest themselves. All they lost was the land. They could go find somewhere else to rent, or maybe, you know, they could buy their own plot if they had saved up enough and not have to worry about that. But they're not completely lost. Sharecroppers, meanwhile, don't have their own tools and haven't necessarily [00:04:00] learned the skills of selling the harvest.
In other words, sharecroppers, if they get kicked off their land, are starting over at square one. Tenant farmers are not. That's why authors are tenant farmers. All right, so, um, nerd rant concluded. But I do think it's important. So if Kindle Direct Publishing closes your account and won't allow you to open it back up, you take your tools with you, right?
These tools look like your books because you own the copyright, hopefully. And it looks like your readers that you've collected on something like an email list, which I always suggest authors have if for no other reason than the event that something like this happens and you want to be able to tell your fans why you disappeared.
So you're not starting at square one as an author if someone bans your account. You still know how to sell books, like the tenant farmer knows how to sell the harvest they farmed. And you can take your tools and start selling books in another way.
I like to envision marketing as [00:05:00] water flowing through all these different channels, right? The total flow of the water is however much attention you have to give to marketing. And the channels are things like. Or a reader group or anything you do for marketing is its own channel. If you hire someone to help the amount of water, it grows stronger.
some channels are wider than others, allowing more water to flow into them. If the water has too many channels to flow down, you may only get a trickle in some, or most of them. If you limit the number of channels that the water can flow through, you get a much stronger flow down each. Now, say that one of those channels suddenly has a beaver dam built at the start of it.
This would be like one of those channels being shut down unexpectedly in your accounts band. The water is gonna flood the land for a little bit until you make the other channels wider to accept more water flow. This is how we adjust when [00:06:00] an account of ours is shut down and we can't negotiate it open again.
We widen the other channels and let our attention flow to them more. Maybe we even build a new channel or two for the water to flow through. Now here's how I've seen it go when authors get an account banned. Stage one is freak out. Totally understandable, You know, shake it out. Um, I recommend getting up and away from the computer and maybe going for like a brisk walk in the immediate aftermath to sort of blow off some of that panicked energy and complete the stress cycle.
So you can think more clearly and respond in a way that you'll be proud of later.
Next, you'll probably want to reach out to customer service for the platform. You'll want to appeal the ban, do it as many times as you'd like. You can take the approach of being annoying, which I have seen some people do and is very tempting, but if you do reach a human being at some point, the most successful approach is to treat them like a human being and try to connect with them rather than threatening them or making their day at all [00:07:00] worse.
If you can focus on how you can make their day better, not only are they more likely to help you out, but you'll feel better about how you handled yourself afterward, even if they can't help you out or change the outcome.
If you have any connections who can help you. This is the stage where you'd reach out to them one on one and ask them if they have any wisdom or guidance to offer you on this. Only after you do that, and nothing has worked, do I suggest you consider putting the platform on blast. In general, this doesn't do much, and I've seen authors come off looking kind of like petulant or even unhinged as they do this.
And that's my interpretation. , you know, someone may have a different interpretation, but that's the way it struck me. So I don't know that it rallied support as much as it may have made a lot of people cringe and sort of take a step back from that person at a time when they really needed people to take a step forward.
So you don't have to go this far though. putting a company on blast is not a [00:08:00] necessary step in this process. Most people who do it tell themselves it's an attempt to get their account reinstated and maybe it is, but it's also clearly a way of trying to emotionally regulate in a very public arena. I, I cannot suggest a long walk instead.
So those are the initial steps you can take. If your account gets banned somewhere, it can help to have a process and a plan for this that can really help with the anxiety, but that doesn't mean that the plan and process will work to get your account reinstated. So once you exhaust all your options there, it's time to practice.
Uh, acceptance, unfortunately. Practicing acceptance is incredibly difficult. And if you're an Enneagram 1, 3, or 8, you're going to have the most difficult time practicing acceptance here. Just a heads up. Knowing that about yourself can be really useful. Ones have a hard time letting a perceived wrongful accusation go.
Ones [00:09:00] can't let much that seems wrong to them go. Not, it's not really our strength. But practicing the skill is a crucial step on our path toward liberation. So it's worth giving it a shot. Just see what acceptance might feel like. Threes are just not used to there being no way forward. They tend to be so savvy and focused on the goal that they get there come hell or high water.
The idea that there isn't a way to get their account reinstated may not even compute for a long time. It may even be the first time that a three has encountered being frustrated in this way. So it may take a while, but eventually you're gonna wanna practice. Acceptance and eights are used to being able to force their will on a problem until it submits.
So accepting that it will not submit is going to be very difficult. If you're an eight. Add that to the gross power imbalance between, you know, the author business of an individual author, and a company like. Say, meta, and you have [00:10:00] a recipe for the 8's head to just about explode with a need for vengeance and like this desire to balance the scales.
If you're one of these types, and this happens to you, you get your account banned, just, you know, do some deep breathing, talk to people you view as wise, and channel your inner wisdom as much as you can. That's all I can say. Do the best you can on that. It's gonna be tough. Now that's not to say that the rest of the types will take any of this lying down, but maybe they won't rupture a blood vessel in their eye over it, like our dear ones threes and eights might.
Once you accept that it's over, that the appeals are over or over for now, if that's as much as you can accept at the moment, then it's time to start looking at how to adjust your strategy. If your KDP account is banned, for instance, load up on information about how to sell your books on Kobo, Barnes, Noble, Google, Apple, and the million other places where books are sold.
Or maybe this [00:11:00] is your chance to start focusing locally and look up local markets or cons, indie bookstores where you can sell books and Consider building like a community of loyal and local readers. Maybe the universe is telling you it's time to start selling direct, which you may not have had enough time or motivation for, , before your account got banned.
Sometimes. Spite is great motivation. It's not one of the nine core motivations of the Enneagram, but that's because it belongs to all of us. But I will say pace yourself and manage expectations of the outcomes of any new strategies. Because sometimes we can just push, push, push to try and get there immediately.
But at the same time, I'm not going to let this keep me down. That's a great thought to hold onto during this time of rebuilding. Maybe write it on a post it note and keep it on your computer. I'm not going to let this keep me down.
I find that adding the word fucking to my name helps. For instance, [00:12:00] I'm Claire fucking Taylor and I'm not going to let this bullshit keep me down. You don't have to use as many curse words, but I do highly recommend that you give it a shot. It feels pretty good. These are all steps that you can take for yourself, but I think it's also really important to remember that you'll have support along the way.
Authors generally hate to see this happen to their fellow author, with a few exceptions, of course. And you'd be surprised how many people will ask you how they can help.
Maybe 25 percent of those people really mean it and will follow through on whatever they promise to do. Now that's my cynicism coming through, obviously, but even if it's true, even if only 25 percent actually follow through on what they offer, it's a start. And more than that, it's a reminder that you're not alone in this, which is always a huge relief for our nervous system to learn.
For me, it's a start. I value any opportunity I get to find out who my real friends are. And having your account banned is an [00:13:00] opportunity to figure out who your friends are within the author community. My advice on this is to practice focusing your attention as much as you can on those who show up and not on those who fail to show up doing that you'll just be happier and more energetic during the rebuilding process.
So I don't want to paint an overly pretty picture here. Realistically, if your account. Gets banned. Anything that you use frequently, you'll see a noticeable dip in sales and, and. God, that sucks. It's scary. It's certainly not fun, but it's not the end of your career. The only end to your career is if you stop writing books and stop marketing the books you already have.
That's the only way it can end. It can be incredibly stabilizing when we're in a moment like this, when something has happened to us that we can't control and it's negatively impacting our business to pause and say aloud. This is the bad part. This is the bad part. [00:14:00] Oh yeah, Claire, this is the bad part. I especially encourage any type 7s to practice this, and that's because your defense mechanism of choice is sublimation, or finding the silver lining so immediately that you don't give yourself a chance to connect with a negative reality and acknowledge your negative feelings.
Now, you've probably been rewarded for sublimating a lot in your life, but it's not actually healthy, right? We need to feel those feelings so that they don't build up. And if you've been sublimating a lot, something big like this, you haven't had practice being in these feelings. So it can be very big and heavy.
And just saying, this is the bad part, could go a long way.
So. Anchor yourself in the bad moment, and this goes for all types. Imagine where you are on the timeline of your life, and stick a big red pushpin into the ground and declare, This is the bad part. That can be incredibly validating to your experience, but it does something more. It forces us to [00:15:00] acknowledge that the bad part is just a part, and that there will be good parts later.
Our job is to take our tenant farmer tools and go build ourselves the good part. And then, this is important, when you're in the good part, don't forget to pause, put a big green pushpin in the ground along your timeline, and declare, this is the good part. You made it. Congratulations. One of my favorite quotes is by Kurt Vonnegut, of course, who's surprised by that, but I think about it all the time, and neuroscience backs up the importance of the point that he's making in this quote.
It's relevant to the discussion, so, okay. The quote says, And I urge you to please notice when you are happy and exclaim or murmur or think at some point. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is. Bringing our awareness to the nice moments of life deepens our connections to those and [00:16:00] strengthens our belief that we will return to those moments, even when we're smack dab in the bad parts.
That sense of faith that we develop through that will get us through some knee deep shit like you wouldn't believe, but it has to be cultivated through repetition of small mindful moments. It doesn't show up out of nowhere. Wellbeing must always be cultivated. We have to water the seeds. We have to fertilize it, trim back the dead leaves, fight off any bugs.
And eventually our harvest is there for us when we need it.
Before I wrap this up, I want to touch on one last thing. I've been functioning mostly on the assumption that if you get your account banned, it's because you accidentally broke the terms of service or you did nothing wrong.
And there's no explanation. This happens. Yes. But what if you intentionally broke the terms of service to see if you could get away with it, [00:17:00] and then the consequences came and found you? So this happens too, and it's important to acknowledge that knowingly breaking whatever rules are set out and then getting caught comes with a whole heap of emotions that are incredibly difficult to manage and can add to the stress.
You might feel embarrassed for what you did, especially if some asshole authors decided to spread it around to everyone. You might feel extremely unsafe without fully understanding where that's coming from. You may feel ashamed or guilty. So I want to bring awareness to this because your impulse, if you're feeling these emotions, may be to lie, deflect, or pass along the blame to someone else.
And this is a very human response, okay? It will be incredibly intense, these emotions, to where you have a difficult time thinking coherent thoughts. Your ego is really going to show up here. Your ego defenses. So whatever lies your ego is telling you about how lying, deflecting [00:18:00] responsibility and blaming other people are the best approach and that they could work.
I promise you that you will make it out of this more unscathed and more connected to yourself. If you can find a way to own your actions and take accountability for breaking any rules. Intentionally breaking rules doesn't mean you're a bad person. I get it. Sometimes we break rules. Sometimes the rules seem stupid and we break them and see if anything happens.
All right. So your ego will do everything it can in a moment like this to protect itself and your idealized self image. That's not the path that leads to truth and connection with yourself and others, though. Your ego is lying to you about the best path forward. So take a break from the situation, withdraw, talk with a therapist if you have one you like, and practice owning your actions without taking those actions as an indictment of who you are.
An added layer to this, uh, might be If you were raised by [00:19:00] parents who shamed you a lot as a kid or couldn't separate out your actions from your character. Kids break rules. This includes teens. They do dumb stuff with their eyes wide open about how stupid this stuff is. That's just a part of being a kid.
If your parents use those moments as opportunities to tell you you are a bad person instead of a good and normal person who showed an error in judgment, then your reaction to being caught breaking rules later on in life will feel especially intense. You'll Essentially be back in that place again.
Being mindful of this allows us to have compassion for ourselves and that compassion is necessary to taking the accountability that leads to more positive outcomes for everyone involved. It's hard to take accountability if doing so. Is accepting that you are a bad person fundamentally, but that's not what accountability is.
We take accountability for our actions and good people sometimes break [00:20:00] rules and do things that they kind of know might not be the best idea. That's just life. So if you knew you were breaking a rule and you broke it anyway, I suggest you own it. You'll be proud of yourself in the long run for doing that.
Okay. So if you find yourself in a moment of catastrophizing and you wonder, what if my account gets banned? Here's what I'd offer. You're entering into a tough time, but you have so many good options for responding so that your business is stronger, farther down the line. Take care of yourself as you proceed.
When you feel yourself slipping into panic or apathy, go take a walk or speak with a friend who's good for some wisdom and then keep rebuilding. Maybe just take a break and start the next day. Practice accepting what you can't change. Take accountability. For what's yours, ask friends for support, [00:21:00] redirect your energy to other options available and take lots of breaks along the way.
You really don't know what amazing things are waiting for you. As a result of having that single door close, the land may have been pulled out from under you, but you still have your tools and you know how to sell a harvest. So you got this. I am confident that you will rebuild. If you stay in that mindset.
So that's it for this episode. I hope you take a minute to marvel at how much you've learned since you started doing this author thing. No one can take that from you. Isn't that fabulous? If you want to reach out to me, send an email to contact at ffs. media. I'm Claire Taylor and I hope you'll join me for the next episode of What If for Authors.