Hashtags and Cocktails

In Guest Contributors by Guest Contributor

By Jerome Kramer, special to Publishing Perspectives

If you were to judge an industry by its parties, consider this: The last time BEA was held in New York, the “hot” Friday night party was held by Google, the then-reigning king of the future of publishing. This year it was Twitter.

“That’s how much things have changed in two years,”said Rebecca Ford, who blogs for Oxford University Press, and was among the handful of Oxford staffers who attended the first BEA Tweetup held last Friday at Greenhouse. “Everyone was there and wanted to meet everyone,” added Ford’s colleague, Lauren Appelwick, an Oxford publicity assistant.

What was particularly impressive, said Ford, was the level and not just the number-of, attendees (nearly 400 RSVPs): there were not just friends and publishing acquaintances of the Tweeters, but  newly-converted Tweeterati as well, including editors and execs.

The buzz and bustle of the party meant a lot of interactions between those who knew each other online but had never met. One  surprise for OUP’s Appelwick was that she expected the Tweetup to be “a lot less glamorous” than it turned out to be.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Xiw88MqJo

Is Twitter helping to sell books? Appelwick thinks so: “I would say it’s working.”

Either way, the industry is at least trying: Twitter adoption across the industry happened far more rapidly than any other technological innovation that’s happened in the last decade. It’s a good thing: Publishing can do with a little bit of glam, even if at the end of the day, it’s geek glam.

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READ: Oxford University Press’s Blog

About the Author

Guest Contributor

Guest contributors to Publishing Perspectives have diverse backgrounds in publishing, media and technology. They live across the globe and bring unique, first-hand experience to their writing.
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