Managing privacy as an author with a public profile

A couple of days ago, I received a number of phone calls from a mobile number I didn’t recognise. As someone who hates speaking on the phone (I’m an introvert, so it goes without saying that I prefer text/email) I reluctantly answered after the third time, only because I wanted to check in case it was something important. Turns out it wasn’t. Quite the contrary, actually. The caller was a man from London who was relocating to Northern Ireland for work and had been given my number by a mutual acquaintance, someone I had worked with a decade ago in London. He explained that our mutual acquaintance had said we were ‘like-minded’ people and wanted to meet, now that he is based in Belfast, for business reasons.

As an author, I cultivate a public profile. My public author accounts are separate from my single private account for friends and family. I am careful about how I come across on social media; my image and book promotion is all carefully planned. Ask any author and they’ll say the same thing. Our public image, whether real or a gravatar/ logo, is our brand. But giving out my phone number is different. That is reserved only for people I know, and have met, in real life. I didn’t ask what business the caller did, but I can only assume that if he was contacting an author (don’t worry, I’m not going to say he’s a literary agent, and I’m about to be ‘discovered’ lol) that he was a digital marketer. I have had more than my fair share of unsolicited digital marketing scammers sending me DMs over the years and I even had to remove my email address from this website because I was getting harassed so much. (You can read my gripe about digital marketing harassment here.)

Managing privacy while still trying to be public about one’s author profile is a tricky balance. I met with a writer friend who discussed an article she had read about how authors can potentially make themselves vulnerable to fraud by using their real signature when doing book signings. I found this intriguing, and hadn’t given much thought to this beforehand. I tried to search for the article to read it myself, and to share on this blog for the benefit of others, but couldn’t find it. If you come across it, feel free to share the link in the comments.

While use of an author signature doesn’t affect me too much, since I no longer do live book events (see my recent post on this topic here) it is an important consideration and something I’ll be mindful of, for sure.

So, what can an author do to manage a public image alongside balancing privacy with their personal life and identity? Here’s my checklist of things to consider:

1. Block spam callers if they get your phone number.

2. Don’t use your real signature for book signings, or use a pseudonym.

3. Keep a private social media account reserved only for trusted friends and family and use public accounts for all other book-related business.

4. Use a general ‘contact’ email address that will filter across to your actual email to limit spammers.

I’m sure there are more things I could add to the above checklist that I’m unable to think of at present. Feel free to add any other helpful pieces of advice if you have any; it would be much appreciated.