BookTalk.org

That is the question.

Or, more specifically: should I join Twitter in order to promote my book?

If any other authors here have taken the plunge I'd love to hear about your experiences, and whether it's all been worthwhile.

All the best
Robert
www.the-cambridge-list.blogspot.com

Hi,

I have been on Twitter for over a year and I think it's great. I have accumulated a good number of followers by investing about an hour a week following others. Many will follow you back.

I got over 40 personal messages of support when I announced I was offered a contract on Twitter. It felt great!

So I'm all for it.

Laurence
@lpobryan

I don't know how much it helps but, in my opinion, it can't hurt.
You know what they say (whoever "they" are ), Exposure, Exposure, Exposure. Can't have enough exposure.

I've been tweeting about my books for about 3 years. I think it's important to tweet other things besides just your book so your followers don't get bored with you or feel like they're being relentlessly bombarded by your book tweets.

There are some writers on Facebook groups (like Author Central) who have organized "tweet fests" where they all list the tweets they'd like the others in the group to tweet for them. It's a pretty cool idea because some of those people already have many hundreds of followers who will see those tweets. It can mean that your tweets could be seen by many thousands of other Twitterheads. Twitterites? Twitterphiles? Whatever.

I think Twitter is great but, as Gary says, it's important to tweet about other things rather than just your book. I soon unfollow people who just tweet "buy my book", "here's the link for my book", "please 'like' my book" etc.

I have begun tweeting even before the book is launched. Hope it helps build up a large enough market. Twitter is a good tool but Gary is spot on when he says you have to tweet about different topics too. Not too hard for me. My only beef with twitter is that I spend hours upon hours on it and get no followers... maybe when I get famous it may be different.

I appreciate this discussion. I myself have wondered to tweet or not to tweet. I have decided to tweet!