Twitter?

[Jodi]

Is it ok to ask for peoples twitter accounts? Need more book lovers on mine!

Here is me - https://twitter.com/Carra_23

[Jim]

I confess to doubt about how much use twitter is for authors to be honest :-(

[David]

I once sold a book to someone I met on Twitter! At least one author of my acquaintance has said that she has noticed a positive correlation between her Twitter activity and her sales; if she didn't use Twitter, her sales declined. But she got nothing out of paid Twitter advertising. Her take is that you need to do something to prove to people that you're still alive.

[Jodi]

As far as authors go, I speak to a bunch of my favourites on Twitter and they all seem to love it

[Patti (baconater)]

I spent about five minutes looking at Twitter a few years ago.

I get enough crap shoved in my face through Facebook adverts. Don't need it from another source, thanks.

[Jim]

I think that's the issue, people don't join social media to have adverts thrust down their throats.

I once had my book tweeted out to somewhere between 50K and 100K Americans (an accident, it wasn't something I'd planned)
I think it sold one copy

[Anna]

I've sacrificed belonging to Twitter and Facebook and ignored my children's scorn. In order to have time to write, something has to go. Two very kind friends Tweet Countdown Deals for me.

From what I hear from most other authors, it doesn't work. Probably works for famous people who suddenly put a book out and maybe a few others.

[David]

Current Twitter etiquette is that you follow back. If you don't, you will be unfollowed; there are free automatic tools to do this, and people use them. My original pre-author Twitter account has ~2,000 followers, and I follow ~2,000. There are lots of bots and spammers in there, but the real people are mostly authors. When I started, I used to weed out the bots and spammers, now I don't bother, since life is too short to look at several hundred people's idle musings and book adverts. Furthermore, quite a number of authors use Round Team, where they mostly replace themselves by a bot. I retweet anyone that retweets me, watch the Trending and jump in when I feel like it. Every now and then I have a fun exchange with a complete stranger who I would never otherwise have met. I think of the author contacts as potential sources of reviews, and hope that one day one of my efforts goes truly viral, and overall I think it works for me.

[Tim]

I still have a twitter account, but rarely use it. Facebook really annoys me how it restricts things I've signed up for (and how people who sign up to my pages don't see what I post), but I still waste hours on it!

[Kath]

Unless I know the person who follows me on Twitter, I don't follow back. Most of them want to ask me to read and review their book. I don't work like that.

[David]

Back in its early days when you could have something like Twirl or the original Seesmic desktop fit in the corner of your screen, Twitter was pretty good. I made a load of friends on there.

But when Twitter started restricting 3rd party apps and it went mobile I lost interest and have struggled to regain any positive feeling for it.

[M.P.]

My fellow writers, do not ask what Twitter can do for you, ask what we can do for Twitter.

I think:
Twitter is mostly fun, quick witted and dynamic
You get to hang out (also known as 'stalk') great, weird, interesting people and also other writers
You can ask questions and give answers
It's easy to engage people in conversation
You can poke fun and rattle cages without writing long essays

Like most social media you get back what you put in.

[Jim]

It's interesting. I follow 46 people and am followed by 121. The people I follow are people I 'know' and most of them I've met.

The problem I have with Twitter is I can only 'engage' with it on the desk top computer, and when I'm at the desk top computer I'm working and don't have time to watch the endless stream of book promos and retweets for books I will never read. Not only that but next time I'm back at the computer and I log on there could be a hundred or so messages, none of which are worth the effort of scrolling past.

It's got to the stage where I don't actually look at it every month but facebook and my blog post to it automatically and I always respond to people liking or reposting stuff.
(Because I get an email which I deal with)

most of my 'impact' on twitter will come from writing blog posts that people like and tweet about to their followers and I follow up on that

[M.P.]

I mostly use twitter on my iPhone and iPad.

While the rest of the family watch GBBO or Strictly I read and post to Twitter.

Maybe it is best to use it like a virtual pub. You pop in and pop out. If anything really important happens you'll hear about it, but mostly it's just friends and strangers talking about stuff of no great importance.

[Jim]

No mobile reception here and in this house, no wireless reception because of the thickness of the walls. We wire directly into the router

[Jim]

I obviously use pubs differently, I don't pop in and out, on the rare occasions I get to visit I'll sit and chat for a couple of hours over a couple of pints :-)