As part of the Bloody Scotland event I live-tweeted an event held in the Macroberts Art Centre featuring various people from the publishing industry discussing various elements to becoming part of the process of publishing – from conception of ideas to the end product. The panel consisted of
- Rachel Rayner, Commissioning Editor at Transworld Publishers
- Maxine Hitchcock, Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster
- Allan Guthrie, author, literary agent with Jenny Brown Associates, and publisher at Blasted Heath
- Claire Squires, Director at Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication
During the discussion topics varied between the role of eBooks in the modern publishing world, how to get published, what content is popular and self publishing. Throughout this I tweeted periodically, attempting to succinctly explain what was being discussed. I used the hashtag #bloodyscotland so the tweets would appear alongside other tweets from the festival. This increases publicity for the events and raises awareness both for those already interested and involved in the events, as well as for others. I regret not tweeting directly to the Bloody Scotland twitter account, as this would also have increased publicity for the event and got more people involved.
I was quite pleased with the response I received. I got tweet responses regarding the amount of money E.L. James makes from her self-publishing of Fifty Shades of Grey which I retweeted. As well as this, following the session I received a tweet from Rachel Raynor, who was on the panel, saying she enjoyed my tweets (which, considering I’d tweeted her name incorrectly due to mishearing, was very kind). Finally I gained 20 followers the week after my live tweets, many publishing companies or publishing related twitter feeds. I feel therefore that the live tweets were a success.
