A Blogger’s Life At OUP

by Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 4/9/2007 3:00:00 AM

As trade publishers and university presses try to exploit the promotional potential of blogs, Oxford University Press is taking a more assertive approach than most, with a blog editor whose fulltime job is to attract the attention of these often-influential online scribes.

The editor, Rebecca Ford, moderates OUP's blog. She spends much of her time recruiting the publisher's authors to contribute newsworthy and amusing material. To that end, Ford has recruited some authors to do regular columns. Anatoly Liberman, author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them (February 2005), is contributing posts every Wednesday as ‘The Oxford Etymologist.’ (Last week’s entry solves the burning question about the roots of the English term, "alairy.") Ford has even gotten some non-authors to post; her newest columnist is OUP’s v-p of business development and rights, Evan Schnittman. His column, which is promised to provide "a look inside Oxford," will focus on digital issues in publishing.

The overall aim with the blog is to get history and political bloggers—an ideal audience for Oxford’s heavy nonfiction list—to link to the site by offering substantive material that goes beyond an author's book. "The last thing I want an author to do is write a publicity release," she said. Ultimately, of course, the hope is that those bloggers will help spread the word about OUP's books. But Ford also simply wants to draw people to the site. Schnittman’s blog, for example, isn’t tied to any book, nor does it subtly or overtly promote others. Nonetheless, it’s insider take on publishing is something Ford thinks can help the blog "gain our readers trust." A blog that doesn’t have that, she added, "is useless."

One recent post managed to give The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring and the Rise of the Environmental Movement author, Mark Hamilton Lytle, a platform pegged to current events. The post, announcing that March is Women's History Month, highlights environmental crusader Carson and includes a comment from Lytle about the dynamic woman. A stretch? Maybe.

Another post, from last week, is more off the cuff; in it Ford manages to combine a random discovery about the link between spiders and dancing with a plug for an Oxford reference title. (The entry pulls from Oxford’s International Encyclopedia of dance—which is now online—to point out that the Italian style of dance known as the tarantella is dubbed such because "it was used as a cure for the poisonous bite of the tarantula spider. Who knew?)

Does this kind of outreach work? A post last Monday, about the first night of Passover, is one Ford cites as particularly effective. Dubbed ‘Passover and Mom,’ the entry—by You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother author Joyce Antler—discusses how Jewish moms are often overlooked on the high holiday. The entry, which Ford was pleased to note drew a few responses—always a positive sign—also proved one of the most popular entry points for the week, meaning that a number of people clicked on a reference to the post (in either Google, another blog, in an email or elsewhere on the Web) to get to the OUP blog.

Ford, who’s been running the site since last summer, started in Oxford’s publicity department. She took over her current gig after former co-worker Matt Sollars (who was then doing the blog as a "side project") decamped for journalism school. With a background in both blogging and journalism—Ford worked for Atlanta's alternative newspaper Creative Loafing, before OUP, helping one of the paper's senior editors run a political blog—she recognizes that much of the job is also about establishing and maintaining relationships with bloggers. One of the best things that can come from a post, she says, is having a blogger link to it and request a copy of the book.

Although Ford couldn't provide examples of books that saw a direct rise in sales because of exposure on the blog, the site's traffic stats have jumped. She said the blog was drawing 2,000 unique visitors a month when she took it over; now it averages 25,000. She admits that, like just about everything else about the blogosphere, it's still a matter of trial and error. "I'm still learning what kind of posts work better than others and what kind of bloggers are better to reach out to."