Episode Description:
In this episode of What If for Authors, Claire Taylor tackles a difficult and often painful reality for many authors: the feeling of being scammed or taken advantage of. Whether it's an outright scam or a subtler instance where you’ve overpaid for a service, many authors will experience some version of this during their careers. Claire explores how these situations arise, what it feels like when you realize you’ve been scammed, and how authors can manage their responses to these events.
This episode is not just about identifying scams, but also about the emotional and psychological impact of feeling scammed, especially the patterns of cynicism and distrust that can emerge as a result. Claire offers Enneagram-specific insights into how each type is likely to respond to being scammed or taken advantage of and provides practical advice on how to process these feelings and move forward in a healthier way.
Key Takeaways:
The Reality of Scams in the Publishing Industry: Claire discusses the various forms of scams and exploitation that authors, especially those early in their careers, might encounter. From paying exorbitant fees for services that should cost far less, to outright scams guaranteeing bestseller status, Claire explains why these situations happen and how authors can protect themselves.
Feeling Scammed vs. Being Scammed: Whether or not there was malicious intent, the feeling of being scammed can still have a significant emotional impact. Claire explains that the focus of this episode is on how you feel when you believe someone has taken advantage of you, and why it’s important to address those feelings, regardless of the scammer’s intent.
Common Patterns by Enneagram Type: Claire breaks down how each Enneagram type is likely to react when scammed, offering valuable insight into the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that may emerge. Whether it’s the anger of Type 1, the shame of Type 2, or the withdrawal of Type 5, understanding these patterns can help authors recognize and manage their emotional responses.
How to Regain Trust Without Cynicism: After experiencing a scam, many authors find it hard to trust again. Claire offers tips for how to rebuild trust in others and set boundaries without becoming overly defensive or cynical. She explains how taking the time to reflect on past experiences and the lessons learned can help authors make more informed decisions moving forward without shutting themselves off from opportunities.
Practical Advice for Avoiding Scams: Claire offers practical steps authors can take to protect themselves from scams in the future. From doing research and asking for recommendations to learning the basics of the publishing industry, these tips can help authors avoid the most common traps.
Why You Should Listen: This episode is essential for any author who has ever felt scammed or taken advantage of in their career. Claire provides not only empathy and validation but also practical tools to help you move through the emotional fallout of these situations. By exploring the Enneagram-specific patterns that can arise when we feel betrayed or scammed, she offers tailored advice for how to navigate these experiences without becoming overly cynical or defensive in the future.
Join the Conversation: Have you ever felt like you’ve been scammed or taken advantage of in your author career? How did you handle it? What lessons did you learn? Share your thoughts by emailing Claire at contact@ffs.media. If you need personalized support or a space to process your feelings, consider reaching out for one-on-one coaching.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
[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/sustain.
Today's topic is one that, unfortunately, most if not all authors will experience at some point in their careers.
And if you experience it once, the anxiety about it happening again is naturally going to increase. I'm actually tempted to say that everyone who decides to publish books will experience what I'm talking about today because I don't know of anyone in my own anecdotal experience who hasn't at one time or another felt like they'd been scammed.
So that's why today we're going to jump straight into this very important topic and ask the question, What if I've been scammed?
It's important to note for the [00:01:00] discussion today that it actually doesn't matter. If you've objectively been scammed, what matters is that you feel like you've been scammed, that you believe someone has taken advantage of you. Did they do it intentionally? It's incredibly difficult to pass a verdict on that, so I don't really see the point of trying to litigate their intention.
The part of the scenario that's ours to deal with is how we feel about feeling scammed. To look at this from another angle, what if someone scams you and you never find out that it was a scam? Is it a problem if you don't know about it? I would argue that if you don't realize you've been scammed, then it's unlikely that being scammed has affected your approach to your author career at all.
There was no lesson to learn. When people realize they've been scammed or believe they have been, that's when the cynicism starts to creep in and we find various ways [00:02:00] to armor up against having it happen again. That's really what I want to talk about today, that armoring up.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of straight up scams out there that prey on authors. The reason these work so damn well and can stick around for so long is because there are always new people who want to publish a book. Not only that, but publishing a book is the kind of pursuit that you do with your hopes and dreams galore behind it.
So that makes us Much more likely to buy bullshit from people who are selling it. People tend to get scammed earlier in their careers because they simply don't know how the industry works. Which makes sense. If you don't have experience, you don't know. So if someone says, hey, pay me 10, 000 and I'll make your book a bestseller, this newbie author maybe doesn't necessarily see all the red flags.
In that interaction, [00:03:00] like guaranteeing a bestseller result, not specifying which bestseller list, and the fact that money should always flow from the publisher to the author, not the other way around. These are just things that you learn over time. Being an author. And until you learn it, scammers are going to scam.
I do know quite a few authors who have been taken advantage of this way. It takes everything, everything inside of me, not to ask them to please just give me a name, just give me a name. Who did it? Just give me an eight. And then, you know, spend the next few months of my life seeking revenge. I swear, sometimes I feel so eight ish when I see my friends taken advantage of.
The, the eight really comes out of me, um, in situations like that. But I just can't stand when someone is taking advantage of the goodwill of someone else. It just, oof, it just gets to me. [00:04:00] Anyway. This happening though, someone preying on someone else in this industry, it's unfortunately just part of the ecosystem of our industry.
Do I think that makes it okay? No. Would I like for there to be less of it? Of course. But if you zoom out, it probably will always be a part of the ecosystem of this industry. So that's the obvious kind of scam that takes place. But there are subtler ways of being taken advantage of as an author that are much more commonplace.
So if you find yourself involved in one of these situations, you're also likely to feel scammed or taken advantage of, right? So these are things like paying companies thousands of dollars for services, like formatting your book and uploading it to retailers. And then realizing that's something you could have learned to do for yourself for about under 500 bucks, right?
It could look like hiring a cover designer who returns a big hunk of crap to you That was most likely done in word art [00:05:00] Or it could look like, you know paying someone for a service and they keep pushing back the delivery date Until you wonder if they're ever going to deliver, you may even feel scammed.
If you pay a lot for a course on something like writing or marketing, and you don't feel like the content you got was worth the money. So the definition of scammed is going to vary a lot from person to person. And some people are quicker to call something a scam than others.
I think it's interesting for each of us to note about ourselves how quickly we jump to the word scam when the other person may not have had any ill intent. And then some of us may be very slow to use the word scam, even when every other person who's aware of the situation is pretty damn sure that there was ill intent behind it.
A couple of reasons come to mind for why people have different thresholds before they will use the word scam. For one, admitting that someone has scammed you can make you [00:06:00] feel foolish or vulnerable. You may not want to feel that way about yourself, so you avoid the word as long as possible. Or you jump to it very quickly, right, because this is something you don't want to feel, and then you use that to justify getting some sort of revenge or payback.
People may also be slow to use the word because once you realize you've been scammed, it sort of calls for action.
Maybe that's trying to get your money back, maybe it's alerting others, or maybe it's just re evaluating some of your other connections and transactions to see if you've been scammed in a similar way without seeing it.
Realizing you've been scammed and then taking action on it can be a lot of work, and it can really upend our plans and our progress and our career. Not to mention, it's just the beginning. It's goddamn disappointing to realize, isn't it?
So I do just want to reassure you that I don't know of a single person [00:07:00] who has not felt taken advantage of in this industry at some point. If you're farther along in your career right now, it's unlikely that you're going to fall for one of those offers where you pay a publisher thousands of dollars and they market your book and so on.
What you're more likely to encounter is hiring, say, a virtual assistant who is great about invoicing you monthly, but not so great about getting the work done consistently or by the deadlines. Or maybe you're hiring an editor who delivers your manuscript with almost no edits and you wonder how much attention they actually gave to it for the money you paid.
Or maybe there's a collaborator you're sharing with who isn't holding up their end of the workload. So the feeling of being taken advantage of is similar to being scammed. So I feel like we could lump it in for the purpose of this episode. Realizing that you've been scammed or taken advantage of is one of the most disruptive feelings around.
The implicit social contract has been [00:08:00] broken, and that can leave us very insecure about what to do next and who to trust. Almost immediately, we can start to see cynicism creep in as our beliefs about others begin to morph. We armor up with newer, updated beliefs so that we don't experience that same disruptive feeling again.
We may also institute some rules for ourself moving forward, like fire people faster, or Don't take any more recommendations from so and so, or don't hire a friend to do work for you. To be clear, you're absolutely free to create rules like this for you, and I think it shows that we're learning, which is always a positive.
the problems begin to arise when our rules are too general. Like, you can't trust anyone to do the work they say they'll do, so I might as well do it all myself. Even something like don't hire a friend might be too general. Maybe your friend was [00:09:00] just not the right person for the job, or maybe if you hire someone else you know, you simply need to set clearer expectations before jumping into the work.
Because being scammed really strikes at the social norms we believe the world worked by, it's very common for the rules we create afterward to be too broad and sweeping. We can armor up quite a bit. And very quickly so that we don't have to ever feel that pain and discomfort again. But if we can gain a little bit of awareness into what it looks like internally and what actions we may be likely to take externally when we feel like we've been scammed or taken advantage of, we have a much greater chance of noticing that these processes are happening.
We can call a timeout with ourselves to evaluate whether what we're thinking, feeling, and doing is actually appropriate to the situation and the outcomes we're hoping.
[00:10:00] So let's take a look at what these patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving might look like after we've been scammed, depending on our Enneagram type. And these are general, so your mileage may vary, but see if you notice any of these things. If you can recall a time before when you were scammed or taken advantage of, where you started to see these patterns emerge.
Type 1, the reformer, is likely going to go very quickly to anger after being scammed. When you live your life considering what's fair and right, it's really easy to be blindsided when you discover that someone else is not equally considering those things and the way they conduct their business.
The anger is going to feel like righteous indignation because it will seem very clear that you are in the right since you were the one who was wronged. It's also going to be very tempting to launch a crusade against this person who scammed you, but I think [00:11:00] you already know that I do not suggest that approach.
Instead, notice how angry you are and, if you can, take a step back and see what generous assumptions you might have been missing about the other person. Where might the Agreed upon expectations for the work not have been as clear as you thought they were. So ones tend to carry around really high expectations of quality and on time deliverables as their default.
Whereas other types are simply considering other things. A little curiosity here will go a long way in turning down the volume on that anger so that you don't feel like your head's gonna explode if you don't launch into an action to punish the other party for their perceived wrongdoing. You may very well have been just straight up scammed, but I promise you that you will have a better relationship with yourself and with others that you work with if you don't turn this into a public trial.
[00:12:00] Also, think about how much time and energy you could lose on this that could be better spent on your writing. If you are a type two, the helper, you're probably going to be on the slower end of naming what's happening as being scammed or as being taken advantage of. Twos are one of the positive outlook types, and you're very good at compassion and extending the benefit of the doubt to someone else.
That comes naturally to you. So by the time you get around to accepting that you've been scammed, things may have gone pretty far, and your struggle with boundaries is probably going to come to an abrupt halt. By that, I mean, you're very likely going to drop a guillotine on the connection between you and that person.
Now, it may take you trying to help them a few times to deliver what they've promised before you accept that they either can't or won't deliver it.
It's not a bad impulse to help people be successful in upholding their end of a deal, [00:13:00] But your impulse to believe that fairness in an exchange always means that you give at least a little more than you receive might be part of the problem here. So this is likely to let things get pretty far before you pull the plug on the situation.
And of course when you pull it, it's pulled. You're done with them. But, for example, if you pay someone 500, you should get 500 worth of services in return. Not 400 and an excuse, not 300 and a really good excuse, but 500 worth of services. That's how business works.
Asking for what you need is difficult for you as a two, but this is a place to practice it before you get to the point where you want to burn the whole relationship down.
If you're a Type 3, the Achiever, getting scammed is going to feel a lot like failure. And for that reason, you're probably going to do everything in your power to try and turn it into some sort of win. But if someone is dead set on scamming you, there's only so much you can do to make it a [00:14:00] win.
We really don't want to slip into self deceit here as we attempt to deny the reality of the situation. So notice when you're trying to spin a situation of being scammed or taken advantage of into something that paints you in a positive light. That makes your ego feel a little bit better rather than a little bit worse.
Also notice your desire to hide that you've been scammed or taken advantage of to preserve your image of success. Preserving that image. That's a lot of effort spent on image creation when you could just say, Hey, this person scammed me and that's on them.
If you are a type four, the individualist, I'll give you a heads up that you're going to susceptible to anyone who seems to recognize your unique gifts. So anyone who makes you feel special is going to be attractive to you. And a lot of scammers know this, even if they don't know the Enneagram. So that can help you a lot.
Avoid the appeal of scammers to begin with, [00:15:00] but what happens when you inevitably get taken advantage of as we all do? Fours are really likely going to go into cynicism about humanity quick, fast, and in a hurry, right? This looks like people are bad at their core, they can't be trusted, so on and so forth.
Now those beliefs are designed to protect you, right? But what they do is they make you feel very alone and misunderstood. So when you start to notice these emotions coming up, the best thing you can do is reach out and connect with other people rather than withdraw into yourself emotionally. Your heart will need some extra tending, so be sure that you're looking for evidence to disprove your cynicism, not simply to reinforce it.
If you're a type 5, the investigator, being scammed is really going to trigger you, because it will make you feel like a fool, which is sort of your biggest fear. This is a very known trigger [00:16:00] of the five, feeling foolish. So no big deal, but this is the thing that you spend all that time and energy trying to avoid.
Your first impulse will probably be to withdraw and try to better understand the situation or sort of convince yourself in one way or another that you are smarter than them and that they didn't outsmart you. You're also likely to fall into a lot of intellectual cynicism. So notice when you're conceptualizing humanity to keep a safe distance from it, rather than going and gathering the robust evidence you need to form your opinions about who you are.
Whether or not an individual person can be trusted.
Try to remember that just because you were fooled doesn't mean you are a fool. If nothing else, you now have more information about the industry and how certain particular people work within it, which can help you make more informed decisions in the future.
Being scammed [00:17:00] is not an excuse to retreat into your castle and pull up the drawbridge behind you forever. It can be useful for learning lessons, and you love learning lessons if you're five, but just because you don't believe you are emotional doesn't mean that your emotions aren't over inflating the application of whatever rule you're coming up with.
Make sure that whatever lesson you're learning is granular enough, specific enough, that it doesn't lead to cynicism that continues to cut you off from the rest of the resources of the world.
If you are a type six, the loyalist, yeah, this is going to hurt. Being scammed is really going to hit those trust issues that you spend a lot of time trying to navigate. Very likely the person who scammed you will be a figure of authority as well, which hurts extra for a six. So let's say someone you trusted took advantage of you and you didn't see it coming.
That could very easily send you into [00:18:00] a series of questions about your own judgment. that can lead to this never ending pattern of doubt about who else can't be trusted, or how to vet someone before you trust them so that you can guarantee that this won't ever happen again. Your armor can get very thick very quickly as a six if you've been scammed, so just be careful.
Keep some awareness about that. Just because the person took advantage of you does not mean that everyone you trust is inevitably going to take advantage of you. So keep on the lookout for that individual instance turning into a projection on everyone. If you start to develop that cynical belief, What your attention will do is it will go toward, it will look for, and filter out anything that doesn't point to signs that someone has broken trust.
And that attention can become very oversensitive because it's activated by fear. So suddenly, people who you really trusted [00:19:00] are going to be sort of pinging that radar, um, and telling you that there are indicators that they can't be trusted. So quickly you may find yourself not really trusting anyone, including yourself.
And to be clear, that would not be a truthful assessment of the situation. Right? To say that no one can be trusted, including yourself, is not a truthful assessment. So if you notice that feeling creeping in, um, It might be time to take a beat and do things that regulate your nervous system, like deep breathing, going for a peaceful walk in nature, journaling, or even just distracting yourself with a TV show, so that those thoughts don't, you know, gain momentum.
Just make sure that the TV show isn't one where, like, everyone's betraying each other, right? Then, once you're feeling calmer, ask a friend who understands the industry. to help you deconstruct what happened and what some of the red flags might have been along the way. That [00:20:00] way you can better spot those and not conflate all the behavior of the scammer.
With betrayal. So even their benign behaviors that mean nothing could start to trigger suspicion in you if you don't take that time to deconstruct, if you're a type seven, the enthusiast, it's possible that the pain of being scammed is more than you care to deal with. So you move on from the situation before you take the time to learn the lesson it's asking you to learn.
The result of that is that you may be scammed in a similar way in the future. The pattern will just keep repeating until we learn from it. You are also what's called a positive outlook type, which means that in conflict, you can very quickly put a silver lining on something.
Now that's great for your resilience, but if you silver line being taken advantage of, then you're asking for a similar situation to come up in the future. So before you jump to that silver lining. Notice how uncomfortable it makes you to, to think [00:21:00] about how someone has betrayed or taken advantage of you and just sit with that until you can understand how it happened.
Maybe from that, create a rule for yourself so that you don't repeat the same pattern.
That rule could be something like if someone is putting pressure on me to buy an expensive product, that's a sign that I need to sleep on it before I buy the product. So creating these rules may be a new skill for you. So just feel free to ask someone else in the industry to help you deconstruct this, if that's what you need.
If you are a type eight, the challenger, one of your triggers is being blindsided. So being scammed would definitely fall into that territory. You tend to keep an eye out for anyone trying to take advantage of you as it is. So, there can definitely be a false sense of security that you have seen every threat there is.
That you are somehow immune from any vulnerability in that regard. So when someone slips through [00:22:00] and blindsides you and scams you or takes advantage of you, this is going to be a big deal for you. You're going to want to fight either physically or maybe verbally online. It's going to flare up that core fear of yours in a way that can really give you tunnel vision.
So knowing that this is one of your triggers is a great way to start maintaining control over your response. Thanks. Your desire is to maintain control of yourself, right? Be independent, not controlled or harmed by others. But when you get triggered and start wanting to burn down a village, that's a great example of losing control of yourself.
So if you genuinely want to stay within your own autonomy here, you must recognize this trigger and come up with a plan for regulating yourself before you launch right into action. A desire for revenge may present itself. And as I mentioned earlier, I am also familiar with this [00:23:00] pattern, but you don't have to listen to it.
So listening to it could take weeks of your life away from what you want to be doing with your writing career. That kind of sounds to me like the person who scammed you would still be in control of your time and energy. And I suspect that's the last thing you actually want.
If you are a type nine, the peacemaker, You're also going to be on the end of the spectrum where it takes you a very long time to admit that you're being scammed. The impulse of the nine to avoid conflict by saying, this is fine, everything's fine, is gonna catch up with you and cost you more money in the long run when it comes to being taken advantage of.
So listen to your gut early on if you're a nine. If it's giving you resistance when it comes to working with someone, take a moment to ask it why. It's easier for you to say no before you start working with someone than after you've begun working with them. So think about [00:24:00] going no and then yes. That's going to be easier for you than yes and then no.
It's really important early on that you check in with yourself and listen to those gut instincts of yours.
You are going to avoid anything that feels like conflict, even if that's demanding your money back from a scammer or someone taking advantage of you. But that doesn't mean that you are not. pissed off when you realize, and we both know that. So notice when you start to do mental maneuvers, like trying to see things from their point of view in the most generous way possible, simply to avoid Taking action that will lead to the necessary conflict that they have created through their actions.
Your ability to see the best in people and see things from their perspective is a gift, but if you don't use it in appropriate situations, it can become something that is used against you by someone who's [00:25:00] a scammer or wants to take advantage of you. So if you're tired of people taking advantage of you in big ways, but also small ways, start to notice When you are allowing it because the pain of allowing it is less than your fear of conflict.
That's the first step in deciding whether or not the conflict is actually as scary as it initially feels. No one is better at resolving conflict than a nine, so you might as well decide when it's time to go in. Just go in, because you will come up with a resolution that is is. roughly good for everyone.
If there is a resolution where everyone can come out with what they need, a nine is going to find it. So whatever your type, just begin to notice the patterns that arise for you. And when I'm talking about patterns, I'm talking about thoughts, feelings, and behaviors whenever it feels like someone is taking advantage of you or you're being scammed in your author career.
[00:26:00] It can be really helpful to retrace a time in your past when this happened because all of us have been taken advantage of before in our lives in one way or another. So think back to that time and from the safe distance of the present, try to retrace some of your steps. What did you immediately feel in that situation?
What were your thoughts? Did you try to do some mental gymnastics to avoid accepting that you'd been scammed? What kind of armor did you add after that interaction? Has that armor limited your movement in some important way, like making you more cynical so that you're less likely to trust others and ask for help in your author business?
So take a little time to just contemplate that and see if you can come up with anything interesting and new that gives you insight into how you as an individual respond to someone breaking social codes in that way. If you are wondering, what if I've been scammed, I would say, it's entirely possible [00:27:00] that it's happened to you, and we really don't want a victim blame here, so notice if you're feeling ashamed of having been conned.
Talk to yourself and remind yourself that this is practically a rite of passage of not just being an author, but being a human being, albeit an ugly and undesirable rite of passage. But remember that anyone you're likely to talk to about it will understand and have a similar experience to share, so you're not alone in it.
And then, note some of the possible reactions you'll have based on your Enneagram type, and notice if those have been things that you've experienced in the past. That can help you better recognize them in the future. And if you can recognize them, you can address the situation in a manner that feels appropriate to the situation and the scale of the perceived offense.
And then you can handle it, and then move on. And your career [00:28:00] keeps going on from there. You'll gain some insights from it, but you don't have to become cynical as a result. And then in the future, you will trust the right person.
And it might be the difference maker in your entire career. That's it for this episode of What If for Authors. Thanks for joining me. I'm Claire Taylor and I hope that you have a wonderful week and join me for the next episode. Happy writing.