{"id":69909,"date":"2013-04-24T12:02:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T09:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=69909"},"modified":"2023-04-05T13:38:43","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T10:38:43","slug":"retweeting-literature-how-the-london-book-fair-was-a-twitter-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/04\/24\/retweeting-literature-how-the-london-book-fair-was-a-twitter-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Retweeting literature: How The London Book Fair was a Twitter success"},"content":{"rendered":"
by\u00a0British Council Turkey
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As The London Book Fair, one of the biggest annual global publishing events, came to a close last week, Twitter turned out to be the greatest force taking the event to a new level of engagement and intimacy, to an audience that was far above its reach.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe internet brought freedom from authority of the literary establishment. More importantly it brought new forms of writing.\u201d These words by accomplished writer\u00a0Murat G\u00fclsoy<\/strong>\u00a0were uttered in a panel on the\u00a0Future of Writing\u00a0<\/strong>in last week\u2019s global publishing event, theLondon Book Fair. They were also instantly shared with the world through a new form of writing,\u00a0the 140-character tweet<\/strong>. One of the tweets from\u00a0@BCLiterature, the Twitter account of British Council\u2019s Literature team, included G\u00fclsoy\u2019s words minutes after they were said in the panel. The tweet ended with the writer\u2019s name in a now familiar format,@MuratGulsoy<\/strong>. A new form of writing, indeed.<\/p>\n

The London Book Fair is a highly anticipated annual event for publishers, writers, and those who have an interest in the future of books. The fair, attracting around 25 thousand visitors each year, selects a country to become the\u00a0market focus<\/strong>\u00a0for that year. This year, it wasTurkey<\/strong>\u00a0who took centre stage in last week\u2019s London Book Fair, with a collaboration with the\u00a0British Council\u00a0<\/strong>for the sixth time. Some of the best names in contemporary Turkish writing and publishing were in the UK, giving UK audiences a rare opportunity to meet and interact with Turkish writers. While 20 writers from Turkey took part in discussions with UK writers, publishers, academics, cultural commentators and readers between\u00a015 \u2013 17 April<\/strong>, the official dates for the fair, the cultural programme for market focus will continue throughout this month.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s London Book Fair was one that made effective use of\u00a0social media<\/strong>, especially the micro-blogging platform\u00a0Twitter<\/strong>, that is popular both in Turkey and in the UK. Announcements were made, events were covered live, pictures were shared minutes after they were taken. Writers, publishers and aficionados of literature sent excited tweets throughout the course of The London Book Fair. It was an event that brought global a brand new meaning with the help of Twitter enthusiasts.<\/p>\n

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Reaching millions through tweets and retweets<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hashtags like\u00a0#LBF13\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0#LBFTurkey<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>were used to draw Twitter followers interested in this global publishing event. \u201cM\u00fcge Iplikci talks about feeling in the moment as a writer, in the present, but also a belatedness, writing out of Istanbul #LBFturkey,\u201d wrote one tweet, while the Turkish writer continued her speech in the\u00a0One Night in Istanbul<\/strong>\u00a0panel.<\/p>\n

It was a thorough coverage of The London Book Fair on Twitter, one that could hardly have been done with traditional media. Social media savvy bookworms followed the event basically through four Twitter accounts, as they tweeted, retweeted and reached millions as they themselves were retweeted.\u00a0@LondonBookFair\u00a0was the official account of the fair, sending around 100 tweets each day to more than 21 thousand followers. Three accounts affiliated with the British Council shared tweets to different sets of audience.@BritishCouncil,\u00a0@BCLiterature<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0@trBritish\u00a0made sure that all the details of the events throughout the London Book Fair were shared.<\/p>\n

British Council Turkey\u2019s Twitter account\u00a0@trBritish\u00a0<\/strong>worked busily as a hub both in Turkish and English, sending original tweets, and making sure that tweets from the other three accounts, as well those from the writers, publishers and commentators , were retweeted to the mostly Turkish followers. @trBritish was the Twitter account that was taken as a solid source for The London Book Fair, with major literary accounts like\u00a0Vatan Kitap\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Kitap D\u00fcnyas\u0131\u00a0<\/strong>retweeting its tweets.<\/p>\n

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Turkish writers as avid tweeters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turkish writers were also busy sending their own tweets throughout The London Book Fair, some about the events they were participating in, others more leisurely tweets on their UK visit. While the bestselling crime novelist\u00a0Ahmet \u00dcmit\u00a0retweeted British Council Turkey\u2019s tweets capturing his speech (\u201cWriting a bestselling novel doesn\u2019t show that you\u2019re a successful writer. There\u2019s only one criteria, and it\u2019s time!\u201d), he also made sure that he sent tweets about his trips to the\u00a0Natural History Museum<\/strong>,\u00a0the Royal Albert Hall<\/strong>, as well as his excitement about talking about detective novels in\u00a0Edinburgh<\/strong>\u00a0later in the week, \u201cwhere Sherlock Holmes scribe Arthur Conan Doyle was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acclaimed Turkish writer\u00a0Ece Temelkuran\u00a0was another avid tweeter, making sure that she thanked everyone for \u201cthe marvellous Book Fair\u201d through mentioning their Twitter accounts:@LondonBookFair, @BritishCouncil, @trBritish, @englishpen, @Foyles<\/strong>, and@arcolatheatre<\/strong>. The internationally acclaimed Turkish writer\u00a0Elif Shafak\u00a0also sent out tweets and retweets to her followers, with the occasional picture added to her tweets. The picture of the London Book Fair in its last day was shared with the words, \u201cAs the fair comes to an end. @LondonBookFair Here\u2019s Turkey with filled panels, important subjects, its writers, poets and academics\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLast event of #LBF13 before handing over to S Korea: Mario Levi in conversation with Amanda Hopkinson @englishpen Literary Cafe #LBFTurkey\u201d announced one tweet the end of The London Book Fair. Turkish writer\u00a0Mario Levi<\/strong>\u2019s words later, as tweeted by @BCLiterature, were a welcome contradiction to the new form of communication that is social media. \u201cI still write by hand, with fountain pen and ink \u2013 it is important to feel the words.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tags:\u00a0ahmet \u00fcmit,\u00a0british council,\u00a0british council turkey,\u00a0ece temelkuran,\u00a0elif \u015fafak,\u00a0LBF,\u00a0literature,\u00a0mario levi,\u00a0market focus,\u00a0murat g\u00fclsoy,\u00a0social media,\u00a0The London Book Fair,\u00a0twitter<\/p>\n

Category:\u00a0Arts<\/p>\n

Posted on April 22, 2013 by British Council Turkey<\/p>\n

\"LBF13_\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0British Council Turkey As The London Book Fair, one of the biggest annual global publishing events, came to a close last week, Twitter turned out to be the greatest force taking the event to a new level of engagement and intimacy, to an audience that was far above its reach.   \u201cThe internet brought freedom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[9058,9059,9060,7705,4814,9061,9062,9063,9064,9065,7400,9066,2589],"class_list":["post-69909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-ahmet-umit","tag-british-council","tag-british-council-turkey","tag-ece-temelkuran","tag-elif-safak","tag-lbf","tag-literature","tag-mario-levi","tag-market-focus","tag-murat-gulsoy","tag-social-media","tag-the-london-book-fair","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}