Living Waters Company Standard

• For each genre of writing, you must understand and respect the rights and identities of people who may be identifiable within your manuscript. 

• Communication of statements that can hurt, harm, or have a negative connotation towards the reputation of an individual can be considered defamation of character and acted upon in a court of law. The defamation of character that appears in print form, such as a book, is referred to as libel. 

• The communication of statements that may cause emotional distress to an identifiable individual within your work is an invasion of privacy. That person may have the right to sue you. 

• Invasion of privacy can be (1) revealing embarrassing and private facts, (2) portrayal of an individual in a false light, (3) intrusion into an individual’s private affairs, or (4) misappropriation of an individual’s name for publicity purposes.

If you are quoting Scripture within your book, it will be your responsibility to properly cite this material.

• Suppose you have quoted Scripture from multiple translations of the Bible. In that case, the Scripture needs to be referenced within the text including the book’s name, chapter number, verse number and Bible translation (see The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style by Robert Hudson for more information on use of Scripture in your work). You will also need to provide us with a list of all the translations you have quoted from so those proper copyright statements can be added to the copyright page during design.

• If you have quoted Scripture from only one translation of the Bible, then you still have to reference the book name, chapter number, verse number within your text, but you won’t need to reference the translation each time. You will need to let us know which translation you have used so we can include the proper copyright statement on the copyright page during design.

In addition, many translations have limits as to the amount of Scripture that can be quoted without obtaining written permission. The amounts vary, depending on which translation is being quoted. BibleGateway offers information regarding those limits for several translations.