Tweeting about books

There are many reasons to be on Twitter. For some people it is a way of keeping in touch with world events: all the news with more immediacy and less flannel. For others, it is a way of letting their friends know where they are and what they’re doing. A few people like to share their witty comments or brilliant photos with anyone who happens across their Twitter feed. For some of us, though, it’s all about selling.

I’ve been reluctant to go onto Twitter. (My first paragraph contains 418 characters, so I’m obviously not a natural Tweeter.) But I have a book to sell. (Five books, actually: check out my Amazon author page.) This means people keep telling me I should be there. So last week I gave it a serious look. Here’s what I think I learned. (My ignorance is profound and what is true for me may not be true for you, but here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth.)

Twitter can probably work as well as a promotional tool as do other social media. However, to make it work, I think you have to commit to it. This will involve quite a lot of effort.

Do set up your home page with a decent picture and a banner across the top. You can use the same ones as on Facebook. (Accent authors: Accent can help with banners, if you are struggling.) Make sure that your home page includes a description of what you do. Mine just says that I write historical novels, but it really ought to be a bit sexier and more gripping than that (but it must still include the fact that you write whatever it is you write). Include a link to your blog or anything else you want to link to.

That’s not too bad, but now comes the whole issue of what to tweet, how to tweet it and how often.

Firstly, you need to tweet about lots of things, not just promoting your books. Why would anybody want to read a string of messages from you that say nothing but ‘Buy me! Buy me!’? It’s the same as with blogging. My blog contains a mix of general stuff about 19^th century history, stuff about writing, some random bitsand pieces (usually about tango) and then the odd post directly plugging my books. But whereas I have to come up with just around one idea a week, Twitter demands a constant stream of tweets.

Nor is it enough just to tweet. You must engage with other people and that means reading their tweets. I’m writing this at midday on a Sunday and I only follow twenty people, some of whom are presumably still in bed. Yet I already have forty six tweets to read. And not just tweets, for a goodly proportion are linked to blogs. Let’s assume that just four or five of them are and that I can pull up, read and digest a blog post in five minutes. That’s a good twenty minutes reading blogs that are not necessarily just what I want to see. If the alternative was playing patience on the computer (and, let’s face it, it might well have been) that’s fine – but if there was any danger of working, or cleaning the house or, god forbid, going out into the fresh air, that’s twenty minutes of your life you’re not getting back. Almost worse, the people you interact with might be amusing and stimulating. Since I met @CarolJhedges online, hours have vanished in enjoying and responding to her tweets: definitely not a waste of life but hardly getting much done.

You need to get busy with hashtags, such as #mondayblogs. That means other Monday bloggers will see your blog and retweet the link to their followers. You’re supposed to return the compliment, of course. But the problem with this (and all retweeting) is that either I am passing on a naked link (boring for me and boring for people who get it) or I have to read the blogs. There’s hundreds of them. Literally hundreds. It’s not an Interweb rabbit hole: it’s a warren. I just won’t go there. Which means I’m not really playing by the #mondayblogs rules (other#blogs are available and same applies). So I don’t use the hashtags, so Twitter will never work that well for me.

The most terrifying thing for me is the sheer volume of tweets. I have read (I suspect it was the lovely Carol Hedges again) that, given the nature of Twitter, a tweet is lost to the world after about five minutes. If you tweeted details of your lunchtime sandwich, this is a good thing. But if you were trying to sell, oh, let’s say ‘Burke at Waterloo’ (Buyit. Buy it NOW!!) then you need people to see it. Hence the number of links that seem to be posted by some people every seven or eight minutes. It makes Twitter a rather shouty, repetitive place but you can tune them out. More importantly, though, you have to contribute to the racket. The advice I’ve seen is that you should be on Twitter often – say three times a day, tweeting, engaging, responding. Say half an hour (and a fairly intense half hour). Three times a day. I’m sorry Twitter, but life is too short. Life would still be too short if I live to be a hundred.

At this point I give up. It’s partly my efforts at time management, but largely a personality thing. There are people who love constant engagement with others; loud parties; crowded bars. They’re extraverts and I’m happy for them. But I’m not one of them. I prefer long, sometimes even considered, conversations with a few friends. I’m naturally a bloggy person, rather than a tweeter. Hence this blog.

Please note that, ideally, blogs and tweets are not alternatives. You need both. Without tweets, your blog will lack readers; without a blog, your tweets will not have enough impact to get people to buy your books. (Remember the Prime Objective. If you just want fun online, do whatever you enjoy: this post is about tweeting to sell.) This means that I will tweet, but in a fairly low-key way. I’ve written this largely to explain why and in the hope that the people who retweet me and encourage me will realise why I’m not responding as enthusiastically as I should. In the end, I have books to write. I enjoy blogging, and it does seem useful, so I do that as well. (This is a relatively ‘private’ blog: the one that sells the books is http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.co.uk) I’m never going to be as comfortable tweeting, so I’m not going to do so much of that.

Tempted as I am to sound off about tweeting being the death of sensible conversation and marking the end of civilisation, I’m not going to. It has its uses and its fans. Horses for courses – but I think I’m leaving serious twittering to the birds.