The golden era of long boozy Mad Men-style publishing lunches may be over, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still know how to get down. Publishing professionals still throw good parties…they’re just on twitter now!

This Friday at 4 p.m. EST we’re getting together with Coach House Books, ECW Press, Invisible Publishing, and The Porcupines Quill for a little Balderdash-style competition amongst friends.

It works like this

• Each publisher will bring along one author for the game.
• Each author will lead one round of Publidash. He or she will pick an obscure word and announce it with the hashtag #publidash.
• We indie presses will DM the author with our short twitter-friendly definitions.
• The author will tweet each false definition and the real one anonymously. And that’s where you come in.
• You have 10 minutes to vote for your favourite #publidash definitions. Favourite the one you think is right, and retweet the one you think is funniest, or most clever. The definition with the most favourites will earn 2 points, and the definition with the most retweets will earn 1. We’re playing for bragging rights, and this is how we’ll try to earn them.

You could walk away with a really great haul

Every vote you cast gets you one ballot in a draw for a pack of books by the participating authors

• Round One – Annabel author Kathleen Winter (@supremetronic) will lead, representing Anansi
• Round Two – When Fenelon Falls author Dorothy Ellen Palmer (@depalm), representing Coach House
• Round Three – Adam Nayman (@brofromanother) author of Pop Classics debut It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls, representing ECW Press
• Round Four – poet Geordie Miller (@gingerspaceman) author of the upcoming Re:union, for Invisible Publishing
• The final round – Nicole Dixon (@dizmixen) author of High-Water Mark, representing Porcupine’s Quill.

This is how you play

1. Follow the hashtag #publidash at 4pm on Friday, February 28
2. Favourite the definition you think is correct. The publisher whose definition earns the most favourites will get two points.
3. Retweet the definition you think is the funniest. The publisher whose definition earns the most retweets will get 1 fan favourite point.
4. Each round you vote on earns you one entry in our draw. There will be five rounds, so you can earn up to 5 ballots.
5. Stay tuned for the announcement of the winner of our draw at the end of the game!

Here’s what the publishers are playing for

Bragging rights. Bragging rights and this badass Publidash trophy illustrated by man-for-all-seasons Evan Monday.

This whole thing started with a clandestine late-night twitter meeting. We’ve captured our tweets on Storify to show you how: The genesis of #Publidash