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Agony Aunt
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Twitter - Is this what it's all about?
I'm not convinced by twitter either. Somehow I've got over 1000 followers (don't ask how). I tend to vary the tweets - astronomy, animals, science, books (mine and other people's), some theatre stuff. I only retweet things I like and I get some retweets. I have never bought anything via twitter, although I have from Facebook posts. There are a lot of people selling contacts on there, and I struggle to keep up with it. It does seem like an awful lot of people shouting about things....
Kath wrote: "I once bought a book because I saw it on Twitter. Sometimes it alerts me to a new book by an author I'm not following in any other way. But if they ran Twitter on the sales made through me they'd b..."I've never considered using twitter to find books to read, I only ever check my twitter account when something reminds me of it. (ie once in a blue moon) I did click on it last week because of the Rotary Club/Rosemere sponsored walk.
I get emails suggesting people I might want to follow, but I have those emails marked as spam as I don't want to follow a bunch of people I've never heard of & am not interested in. (although as I rarely read any that I am following I don't suppose it would make any difference)
I did an experiment last time we were discussing twitter. I realised that my newsfeed was clogged with people screaming 'buy my book'Frankly they were books I was never going to buy. Not because they were bad, but because I don't read that much fiction anyway.
Not only that but I found that twitter was useless because it was clogged up with this stuff.
So I just cut the number of people I followed down from 140 plus down to 37. These 37 are people I actually 'knew' if only on here.
Over the subsequent month or thereabouts my number of followers has dropped from 140 something down to the current 99.
People still start following me (probably because twitter recommends it) but I rarely follow them back unless they're somebody I 'know'.
However I still never bother looking at twitter. Occasionally I get a message on there (email tells me) and I respond to the message. Facebook now posts to my twitter feed. I doubt it makes any difference. I suppose if I had twitter on a phone and was stuck with absolutely nothing else to do I might look at it, but on the desk top it's never going to be looked at. I don't think I'd looked at it in September, until I checked today to see how many followers I have
A.L. wrote: "I'm not convinced by twitter either. Somehow I've got over 1000 followers (don't ask how). I tend to vary the tweets - astronomy, animals, science, books (mine and other people's), some theatre stu..." I'm not convinced either, although it's one way of getting the Author name around. Our books are set in Cornwall in the UK, and most days, on my daily constitutional, I take photos and some of them are pretty good if i say so myself! So, no selling, just interesting photos of Cornwall get tweeted to organisations that promote Cornwall as a tourist destination, and they retweet the ones they like, and some people go on to the web site and then buy the book. Great in theory, but at least i get a buzz from the positive comments about my photos!
I was talking to a business contact last night at a dinner, and he told me that he'd been talking to one of the big 5 publishers. On the subject of Indies, the rep had supposedly said that they would only be interested in taking someone on if they already had around a quarter of a million loyal followers across Twitter and Facebook.To which my friend replied, "but surely if they already have 250000 followers, the last thing they need is a publisher - they can sell shed-loads on their own."
And the publisher's reply: "Exactly."
Tim wrote: "I was talking to a business contact last night at a dinner, and he told me that he'd been talking to one of the big 5 publishers. On the subject of Indies, the rep had supposedly said that they wou..."Not that I have 1/4 mill followers, but if I had done that under my own steam, I would give any prospective publisher exactly that response if they then came with an offer for me to join their 'exalted' ranks. Or an agent for that matter
Since I started this thread I have picked up 545 followers on Twitter. Maybe my refusal to take it very seriously has helped ;)
Jonathan wrote: "Since I started this thread I have picked up 545 followers on Twitter. Maybe my refusal to take it very seriously has helped ;)"ha good stuff!
On the other hand I'm down to 98 followers, one more person has obviously noticed I'm not following them.
Well I guess it depends what you use it for. If it is just for mass marketing of your book, then I figure the more the merrier. If you can make people merry along the way, that seems to help. If you genuinely don't care very much (and do not have to be offensive to be amusing), even better it seems to me.
I've had people retweeting my book launch for me for days now. Can't do any harm. I am quite grateful actually. Some of them have untold people trailing them about. Their feeds must read like a fruit machine.
I've had people retweeting my book launch for me for days now. Can't do any harm. I am quite grateful actually. Some of them have untold people trailing them about. Their feeds must read like a fruit machine.
I love twitter to connect with people who share similar views and also to enter contests, won a t-shirt and a poster, lol
There's a book called Twitter for Writers by Rayne Hall which has been a bit of a scales from the eyes for me. People do talk to each other on twitter and when they do it's quite fun but you have to be very choosy about who you follow. If the people who follow you have nothing but ads on their feed, don't follow them back, if they have things that are clearly parts of conversations do. Where twitter works really well is if you have a date enabled mobile phone and a twitter app. Then people say stuff and you respond and chat. The trick is to find people and people who post stuff actually themselves rather than scheduling everything they say at the beginning of the week and not going near the place until they schedule their automatic tweets for the next week. So that's the basic gist, find the substrata of people who talk to one another and avoid the robots. Easier said than done.
I suspect you've also got to have the phone and app as well. If you don't and just sit down at a desktop machine occasionally to check it you're just facing a infinite stream of inane chatter
But the advantage of twitter is that you don't have to subconsciously monitor it waiting for the screams or even worse the ominous silence
There was a time when I quite liked Twitter. I knew, followed and was followed by, quite a good bunch of people. In some ways it was bit like this forum, lots of banter and chat about not much in particular.If you can find such a bunch of people then Twitter can be a lot like this group, but within 140 chars of course).
I keep intending to go back and see if I can get back into it. Maybe I will, one day.
Like a lot of these interwebnet things it all depends on the people you interact with, rather than the thing itself.
Katy wrote: "I don't really get twitter"In what way?
There isn't that much to get, really. It is mostly a matter of finding the right people, for you, to follow and then easing yourself into it when you get a feel for how it works.
I found one of the best ways of getting to know people on there was joining in the silly film name, song title, book title hashtag things that appear every now and then.
David wrote: "Katy wrote: "I don't really get twitter"In what way?
There isn't that much to get, really. It is mostly a matter of finding the right people, for you, to follow and then easing yourself into it ..."
every now and then? :-) Every second of the day there's one going on, much like live football on the telly
I think it's more me not being very good at twitter rather than not understanding it :)
Katy wrote: "I think it's more me not being very good at twitter rather than not understanding it :)"you can't be good or bad at Twitter I don't think, unless one is a troll. But like anything, it can be quite time consuming and you have to decide if it's worth your time
Marc wrote: "every now and then? :-) Every second of the day there's one going on, much like live football on the telly "It has been a while since I more than glanced at Twitter.
Back in my day - when it was all fields - you used to be lucky to get one a day.
We used to dream of... etc.
Katy wrote: "I think it's more me not being very good at twitter rather than not understanding it :)"As Marc said, it can be a time sink. So unless you are really keen on getting involved, it is easier to let it pass by.
One of the reasons I stopped was that it was much easier to talk about writing books on Twitter than it was to write them.
I had a tweet I posted about the program human universe favourited by the producer of the show, but I mainly use it for tweeting about my blog and contacting companies like EE :)
Katy wrote: "I had a tweet I posted about the program human universe favourited by the producer of the show, but I mainly use it for tweeting about my blog and contacting companies like EE :)"Well, there you go. You can obviously already use it much better than a good many on there.
Yes that sounds impressive Katy. At the moment, I pop on there and have the occasional conversation. I have used the #mywana tag - we are not alone for writers - and #amwriting to strike up conversations with other authors and talk generally. On the whole it's been good. If I get the followers right I will have all chat on my feed and only the occasional book promo which, because it's rare, will suddenly seem interesting.Cheers
MTM
I got a reply once from someone who plays the inside of a dalek on TV...
Cool! Now that is a good reason for anyone to do Twitter. Phnark.
I might have told you before - I tell everybody a lot - Margaret Atwood thanked me for tweeting I loved her books.She tweeted
'Thank you'
I have to say over the last few months I've become almost a twitter addict. I do find that as an author it is a great promotional tool because the market is so big there but you have to be quite pushy to make any inroad which doesn't come naturally to me. It definitely is impersonal but I have now started to get familiar with quite a few followers - but to put it into context I have nearly 7,000 "followers" but maybe only 50-100 of those who I regularly interact with
Rob wrote: "I have to say over the last few months I've become almost a twitter addict. I do find that as an author it is a great promotional tool because the market is so big there but you have to be quite pu..."That makes a lot of sense. I have about 1,700 followers and I interact with about 20! Phnark.
I think most of my 268 followers have me on mute.But I'm an unsociable old cow so I'm doing all right. Everything is relative after all.
I have tried to self-promote but the self-hate afterwards is not worth the one or two sales it seems to generate.
Edit to add, I know some people who do very well on it. They have little cliquey friendships going on, meet up for coffee, buy and gush over each others books...
I have very little time to write my own books, let alone read other people's although I do try. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong...Cheers
MTM
If you want to gush over my books, I recommend you buy the edition with the wipe-clean cover...
Perhaps put your kindle in a plastic bag as you read it. (That's bound to appeal to at least one group of fetishists)
I'm not touching any book somebody else has gushed over.
I've just ran across a bunch of women all saying things like, 'Hi honey, got your email. Will get back to you.''Oh fabby dabby. You're soooo lovely'
'Can't wait until we meet up again we have soooo much fun.'
'15th isn't it? Same place?'
'That would be totally amazing. Can barely contain my excitment.'
I think the rest of the world is supposed to be jealous.
Jamie wrote: "I have 1800 twitter followers. I post random crap intermittently and some folk like it, most don't care because I think twitter is just another way to see what celebs are up to. When I actually do ..."I love my twitter account. My illustrator did my profile page which I'm very proud of. I love talking to everyone round the world and I must have retweeted over 1500 times in the last six months. That includes other authors' novels, ideas, quotes and anything that catches my eye. Nothing rude though. I don't RT anything that might cause offence. Of course, I put my own work on and I'm delighted when they're retweeted. I also buy novels from seeing them on twitter. I RT them and then go off to Amazon to download them. I've recently notified folk about my wonderful son who completed a marathon for Martin House Hospice in York. I'm very proud of him and I want to tell the world. Twitter allows me to do that.
Ive made a few sales on Twitter. Best if you've got like minded people though like I RT them then they RT me..Quite fun really its like than game you played in kindie where you repeat after one another..lol
I doubt I have made any sales from Twitter, I have from facebook but that is another matter. I tend to alternate the promo - I share a lot of science, astronomy and history tweets, other books I find interesting and articles from mine and others blogs. I've just started using Thunderclap, so tweeting those. Most of my followers are other authors, or history buffs.The non-book tweets get RT more often than the book stuff, and generally it is the same folks who retweet.
S. wrote: "Ive made a few sales on Twitter. Best if you've got like minded people though like I RT them then they RT me..Quite fun really its like than game you played in kindie where you repeat after one ano..."I think it's called Quid Pro Quo. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I suppose that's the way the world is and I'm happy just accepting it. I've read lots of traditionally published books that were absolute rubbish and I've had an inkling that the author 'knows' the right folk. I just smile when really famous authors make the mistakes that we self-published ones wouldn't dare make.
Example:- She nodded her head (What else can she nod?)
He held the doorknob with his hand (so glad he didn't use his feet!)
It's all great fun.
to be fair, when my hands are full I've opened a door with my elbow. However it does very much depend on the shape of the door handle
Marc wrote: "to be fair, when my hands are full I've opened a door with my elbow. However it does very much depend on the shape of the door handle"Ah, now I would accept that you opened the door with your elbow cos your hands are full. But when you hold the doorknob...? There are some facts that we take for granted. He drove (his car)down the road. We can assume he's in a car. I've even read, he put his hat on his head. Say no more.
I think that if reviews are constructive, then we authors can learn from them. But destructive ones shouldn't be given the time of day.
You can drive a herd of cattle down the road too :-)
And I've made connections with a few struggling celebrities too. So its great :)
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (other topics)The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (other topics)
That's it! The next big thing! (starts scribbling...)