The Five Myths of Crisis Management for Authors

Crisis management during an online attack needs a quick, savvy response.

by Chris Syme

I know what you’re thinking. You see the word crisis and say, that will never happen to me. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are wrong. As with all public figures, a reputation-tanking, book-disappearing, fan-stalking, Twitter-storm crisis can happen to any author.

And it could ruin your business and your reputation if you’re not prepared.

You need to know about crisis management.

Let’s face it, author businesses thrive or die online. Whether it’s a website, social media, our newsletters, online classes, bookstores like Amazon—whatever it is—our business and our reputations exist online. We may have lots of offline marketing going on, but the bulk of our livelihood is attached at the hip to the internet where the good, the bad, and the ugly hang out.

A negative online event can derail a carefully built reputation and business. In this post, I’m going to bust the five most common myths about crisis management. And in the process help you withstand trolls, scams, imposters, scheming rivals, plagiarism attacks, rumors, screw-ups, unethical reviewers, and just plain ignorance. So let’s get started.

1) I don’t need crisis management. I don’t pay attention to what’s being said about me online.

Listening is the first line of prevention when it comes to your reputation. If you don’t have your author name set up on a Google Alert, it needs to be. This is the bare minimum of prevention. These searches can be set to come to your inbox once a day. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And in online crisis, sometimes there is no cure.

If you’re not listening to the chatter around your name, you will miss the warning signs of a potentially life-changing event. On the flipside, if you’re overanxious and listen to everything, you won’t know what you’re looking for.

If you don’t know how to evaluate the severity of the crisis, you’ll respond to nothing or everything. And, if you don’t have a response plan, you will be making spur of the moment decisions fueled by emotional pressure. Or worse, you’ll be tempted to hide your head in the sand—a sure recipe for failure in this connected age.  The old adage is truer in crisis than anywhere else: fail to plan – plan to fail. And you can’t afford to fail in a crisis.

2) I don’t have time to build a core group of engaged fans that will support me.

When you build engagement on social media and through your newsletter, you’re building credibility. Advocates can do more to shorten a crisis than anything you can say or do.

I have personally seen many crises cut short or averted by purposeful intervention by engaged friends, fans, and press. The sum total of your engaged network constitutes your reputation. And reputation is your biggest asset in most crisis events.

We’re not talking about taking to the internet to let loose an army of positive talking do-gooders here. We’re talking about building a network of core readers, author friends, media people, and industry friends who know you, like your books, and would do you a strategic favor if asked.

You never want to try and go online to dispel your own crisis. Everything you say when you’re under fire is gas on the fire. For a larger explanation and strategic approach to this, pick up a copy of my book, Crisis Management For Authors on Amazon.

3) I need to go to my own defense when I am being attacked: I can do my own crisis management.

This is the biggest mistake people make who don’t understand the life of a crisis—how they grow and how they go away.  Yes, you are being attacked with lies. Twitter is blowing up. All your books are disappearing on Amazon and you want to take to social media and give them what for…over and over again.

Just don’t do it.

Response strategies in a crisis require carefully planned holding messages and then monitoring. Just make a statement—that’s a whole different post– and then shut up.

If you are being attacked, they won’t quit when you call them liars. Online trolls and swarms want to get a rise out of you. Stalkers want to see you panic.

If your crisis involves a publishing house, plagiarism, or a scam, your paths are legal ones—something a lot of authors don’t like dealing with. But needs must. So keep your mouth shut for your own good.

Knowing what level crisis you’re dealing with dictates your response strategy. Some things just need to be ignored. Others need immediate legal attention. Others need friends and advocates to mount a friendly support network. Every crisis is different. And there are also exceptions to every rule. But firing back only works when the author being attacked has sufficient social capital to garner everyone’s eyes, ears, and respect. That is a very small portion of authors.

4) If people start harassing me or talking about me, there’s nothing I can do.

Actually, there are lots of things you can do. You can’t stop them from blabbing, but you can do some things to slow them down.

1. Report them. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have procedures for reporting stalking, hate speech, impersonation, and more. Become familiar with them.
2. Familiarize yourself with deleting, blocking and reporting features on all the social media channels where you maintain a presence. Know how to report inappropriate content, where to go to register a complaint or concern on Amazon (I’ve found using Author Central is the best way), get a manual review on an ad, and report someone who has stolen your name on a social media channel. Don’t skip this one—it will save you a ton of time when you discover something is wrong.
3. Don’t engage in dishonest online practices like buying followers or reviews, adding email subscribers that haven’t opted in, buying or trading reviews, or sending out spam (or cold calling as the marketing world politely calls it). Bad habits invite crisis. Your ignorance may not get your books reinstate on Amazon. Be honest, transparent, and remember you are on rented land. You don’t own that Facebook page—you’re renting it.
4. Have a posting policy on your social media sites. Stick it under your About tab. Tell people you have the right to delete, block, or report. Ask people to be civil or risk getting the boot. Have the courage to delete posts that don’t comply with the policy or block people who don’t play nice.

5) I’m not sure what I should and shouldn’t respond to, so I will just ignore it all.

This one really makes me want to pull my hair out. It doesn’t take much to teach yourself the basics about how, when, or if to respond. It all has to do with evaluating the potential crisis and knowing if it needs a response. In my book I talk about three levels of crises:

Level One Threat:

This crisis can be handled in the context of normal daily operations and resources such as email, social media channels, and blogs. Note: some of these (such as bad reviews) should just be ignored.

Examples of a level one threat might include: reviews vanishing from Amazon, another author giving you a bad review on Goodreads, a reviewer leaving a bad review on your Facebook page, a reader calling you out for grammar or editing errors in your book.

Level Two Threat:

A crisis that requires you to contact a company or entity about information that is threatening to your business platform and requires an action such as filing a complaint, filling out a form, or contacting someone directly via Messenger or email.

Examples of a level two threat include: Someone has set up a Twitter profile pretending to be you, receiving an email from Amazon asking you to validate the ownership of one of your books someone else is claiming ownership to, books disappearing from an online bookstore, or losing access to your Facebook page. All these require action on your part.

Level Three Threat:

This has the potential to impact your whole platform or business and may require outside help from a lawyer or PR specialist. This also includes any crisis that involves a “swarm.” A swarm is an angry mob on social media that has been activated by an individual or organization designed to ruin someone’s reputation or business, or is designed to pressure the target to perform an action the mob deems important. Never hesitate to contact a lawyer for a consultation if you feel you need one.

Examples of a level three threat include: “swarm attacks” on social media either instigated by another author, disgruntled readers, a political group, or an unknown source. Level three may also include illegal actions you are accused of, either rightfully or wrongfully.

It may also include something on the level of losing all your books on Amazon due to an algorithm irregularity that identifies you as a scammer.

Busting the myths of crisis management is mostly about crisis prevention and education. Know when to act and when to keep quiet. Learn how to work offline to garner support. Go back to number four and do everything there for a start. Set up a Google Alert for each one of your author names.

You might not be able to avert a crisis but it doesn’t need to bring you down if you learn the basics of crisis management.

by Chris Syme (@ChrisSyme) September 15, 2019

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What about you, scriveners? Have you ever been the victim of an online attack? Have trolls suddenly infested your blog, or swarms of misguided zealots hit you with tons of one-star Amazon reviews? Do crazies leave nasty memes on your Facebook page for no apparent reason? Or worse–as once happened to me–have mysterious evildoers sent you a photo of your house, saying “we’ll get you”? (Yeah, I wish I’d had Chris around then.) 

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Chris Syme is CEO of CKSyme Media Group, which specializes in online book marketing services for authors. SMART Marketing For Authors, the learning arm of CKSyme Media Group, offers online classes for authors interested in learning the best strategies for selling books and building loyal fan bases, whether indie or traditionally published.

Chris is a sought after expert on book marketing and social media training. She has provided expert opinions for the media including MSNBC, Digital Book World, Sports Illustrated, and numerous magazines and digital news organizations.

She is the author of four book marketing books. Her newest book, The Author’s Guide To Selling More Books With Less Marketing is currently available as an e-book exclusively on Amazon (revised in 2019).

Chris Syme may be reached for expert opinions for media and crisis management at chris@cksyme.com.

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Featured image South African firefighter 2017, photo by Steven Terblanche