Claire Ridgway - Keeping Your Integrity in the World of Self-Publishing

Keeping Your Integrity in the World of Self-Publishing
by Claire Ridgway

I love Rudyard Kipling's poem “If”, it is a beautiful poem full of good advice from a father to a son, and actually contains good advice for us all. In the first verse, Kipling writes:

“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;”

These words have resonated with me recently, as authors have hit the press on an almost daily basis for their lack of integrity - for paying for reviews, for faking reviews, for attacking reviewers or being unprofessional on social media. The actions of a minority of authors can bring the whole publishing world into disrepute, and it often seems that when one self-published acts out then all self-published authors get tarred with the same brush. It's sad, but true.

Kipling goes on to talk of keeping your “virtue” and that's what we as authors have to do, we have to keep our integrity. When we publish a book, write a blog post, update our Facebook status or tweet, then the world is watching and we will be judged by what we put out there in the public domain. We have to think before we write, we have to stop having knee jerk reactions and keep our rantings and ravings offline. We have all heard about people losing their jobs because of things they've written on social media, and what we write can lose us or gain us readers. We have to think of ourselves as celebrities with the paparazzi just waiting for us to put a step wrong. We have to act 100% professionally online and to make sure that everything we write is in accordance with the public persona we want our readers to believe in. This doesn't mean that we can't be ourselves, it just means that we have to be the best part of ourselves.

Tips for keeping your integrity as an author:

·      Ignore bad reviews – Don't comment and start a review/comment war. Readers want to review books without the fear of an author jumping down their throats.

·      Communicate with readers in a friendly and polite manner.

·      As author Kristen Ashley says, “Treat your readers as they are. Precious.” - Don't take them for granted, but, instead, respect them.

·      Don't fake reviews or do anything that could come back to bite you one day.

·      Treat other authors and competitors with respect – Don't criticise someone else's book just to “big up” yours.

·      Don't whine and complain – Whine and complain to your other half, but don't do it online, you'll just look desperate and pathetic.

·      Give your readers a quality book – Don't publish until your book has been professionally edited and is the best that it can be.

I'm sure that you can think of other ways to keep your integrity and to avoid bringing your name and the world of writing and publishing into disrepute.

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Genre - NonFiction
Rating - G
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