After months of efforts to try to get some law enforcement websites to publish my work on police books, I had a break yesterday. A representative of Officer.com, owned by Officer Media Group -- the same company that publishes Officer Magazine -- informed me by e-mail yesterday that my interview with Kristen Ziman, a former police chief in Aurora, IL, was published. I read the e-mail while at the Kepler Theater at the Hagerstown Community College, as I was about to go inside the auditorium for a police academy graduation event. I was excited to say the least, considering that the better-known website Police1.com had rejected my submission. I know it's a far fledged comparison but this was like, to me, a doctor getting published in the American Journal of Medicine. Serious law enforcement officers and leaders have articles published and that is something that I wanted to accomplish for a while.
Obviously, that is not a pre-requisite for a successful career in policing. Some law enforcement officers or leaders take some type of FBI leadership course. Some do nothing. I had my website to fall back on, after all. I wanted, however, a wider reach of my audience. Not only did Officer.com publish my interview, but it was on their front page all day yesterday, Saturday February 3. Unlike Police1.com, Officer.com is allowing me to keep the original interview on my own website, blueredmedia.net, and even promoted my website to its readers at the bottom of the interview (with a picture of me). I don't believe I would have been able to publish my own work on blueredmedia.net had it been picked up by Police1.com, based on my understanding of their terms.
Regardless, this is something to be proud of. I will keep educating myself, reading public safety books and other types of books as well in order to better myself. Both Officer.com and Police1.com do not generally accept book reviews, so that is still going to be a challenge to get my work picked up. I would have to interview or write about someone of the same caliber than Ziman for hopes to get published.
The interview on officer.com can be viewed here. The blueredmedia.net version, which is very similar, can be viewed here.
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