Last week on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter I discovered that statistics from a blog post I wrote a year ago (How many people who write a novel finish it and how many get published?) were circulating without a link to my website. I’m not the first person to research these stats, though I very kindly cite the websites where I got the mix of data, which I then condensed into a concise post for ease of access; however, since my blog post appears as the top search hit on Google if you look for the phrase ‘how many people publish a novel‘, it’s most likely the people involved got the information from my blog.
Please, if you are reading this, fellow Indie authors who used the statistics from my March 2022 post without referencing it, or crediting the other sources I used – a polite request to give credit where it is due. My post made difficult-to-find statistics more visible through a Google search – believe me this took many hours of work finding the relevant articles, which I had to trawl for, doing various keyword searches. I am happy that my post is easy for others seeking info, as it was my intention to make it concise for others to find. By all means, share the information in my post – but like me, please link to the sources you use, as I did. Please, please always link to your sources, especially when using them to promote yourself. Fellow authors will appreciate it, and you will keep yourself safe from plagiarism.
Leilanie Stewart 
I’m sorry to hear of this, Leilanie. š¦ But in more serious matters, do they not teach proper citations nowadays? One of the first topics I encountered during college freshman year was citing sources properly (in MLA format).
On any blogs I’ve read, I’ve only encountered links to original posts, or a reblog of source material. Same for social media and online newspapers. Personally I haven’t used formal citations since university. The online etiquette seems to be generally quite casual, I find. But a link of some sort seems to be the generally accepted means of acknowledgment and in the case of the people sharing the publishing stats, there were no links to any sources at all.
I see. Interestingly, my job does involve citing links but not exactly in an academic format. At best, links are cited as “hat tip to X” — following the real-life practice.