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Week 17: Status anxiety can torpedo your business

A couple years into my career, I had an email exchange with a high school classmate who also had a book publishing job in a Midwestern city. As the only ones from our class in the publishing business, I was eager to compare notes.

I have never recognized taboos around money, so I came right out and told her my salary, then asked if she would share hers. She did—and she earned significantly more. I didn’t feel embarrassed or angry; I felt armed with better information about my value.

Among writers especially, taboos have long existed around discussion of money and sales. Some writers in fact take offense if they are asked about sales figures or how much they earn. Shame and anxiety can be associated with low earnings, yet most writers are in a similar boat and would benefit from comparing notes often.

Unfortunately, status anxiety leads people to engage in behaviors that can be bad for business. What is status anxiety? The constant worry people have about their position in society and the fear of being judged unsuccessful. This fear is especially pernicious in Western countries, where success is ostensibly available to all. Therefore if we fail, it is our own fault.

Status anxiety leads to problems like these:

• Reluctance to discuss money matters or compare notes with colleagues. It unfortunately takes a great deal of bravery for anyone today to ask someone else a direct question about money. Even when close colleagues contact me with money questions, they tend to apologize first, even though I’m the person who counsels transparency around money. I can’t say it loud enough: secrecy about payments and contract terms only benefits publishers, not writers.
• Weakness in negotiating. Sometimes writers will take great offense and become emotional if an offer comes in too low. Or they won’t be able to effectively counteroffer or evaluate a deal because they measure value in terms of dollar amounts alone.
• Spending time and money on what “important” people do. I believe the reason so many people want a literary agent or a publicist (or even an assistant, at times) is so they can look bigger and more important to their colleagues or the community. Sometimes this isn’t a bad idea—it’s not wrong to play the game to your benefit. But I wouldn’t do it out of a feeling of status anxiety (without specific goals attached), especially if you’re spending money you don’t have.
• Agreeing to work that pays poorly because it’s prestigious. This happens everywhere and all the time. Paul Graham writes, “If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.”

As humans, we can’t exactly escape status anxiety; it is hardwired into our condition. But you can train yourself to recognize it and stop it from sabotaging your business.

Exercise

Status anxiety isn’t strictly about money, of course. It’s also about awards won, who’s reviewing who, who’s getting certain speaking engagements or event invitations, etc. For writers, this comparison trap lies in wait for us particularly on social media and at writing conferences and events. Alain de Botton, in his book Status Anxiety, suggests several ways to redirect this energy and attention, including:

• Intelligent misanthropy: If you scrutinize the opinions of others, he writes, you’ll find they are “perforated with extraordinary confusion and error.” Knowing who you are and what you want helps protect yourself from the capriciousness of public opinion.
• Inject more art into your life: de Botton writes, “The great artists of everyday life [such as George Eliot and Jane Austen] may help us correct many of our snobbish preconceptions regarding what there is to esteem and honour in the world.”

Questions I would consider answering for yourself:

• Other than your own opinion, whose opinion actually matters to you about your work? When I answer that question honestly for myself—about my work and my business—there is no one else’s opinion that matters. While I do consult others to test my assumptions and beliefs, it’s because I need a sounding board to find the right path forward.
• What do you want or need to continue doing your (writing and publishing) work? I need to do work that aligns with my own values, and I want control over my time. This is how I define business success. You may define it differently.

Explore further

Of all the antidotes out there for status anxiety, I can think of nothing better than Alan Watts lectures. He argues we treat success and status as deeply serious matters because we’ve forgotten that social hierarchies are essentially a game we’ve all agreed to play. Anxiety comes from taking this game too seriously.

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