Twitter a flop as a book promoter? Or just a failure with SOME books?
Electric Literature micro-serialized a Rick Moody story on Twitter and sent it to other feeds. Vroman’s Bookstore cut out the pickup after some readers objected.
Now a Vroman’s blog item is asking if Twitter really helps sell books. Or are book-biz people mainly tweeting to themselves?
So far, I myself have found Twitter to be much more effective at drawing traffic to the TeleRead blog than at promoting my D.C. novel, but perhaps I haven’t devoted enough time to the tweeting up my book. Another possibility is that Twitter may work for some kinds of books but not others.
Anyone with thoughts on this—and maybe tips? Among the believers is Kat Meyer, who sees Twitter as a way to build relationships rather than as a vehicle for hardsell.
Update, 12:56 p.m.: Wall Street Journal blog post and additional thoughts from Guy Gonzalez of F+W media. One issue could be some people’s frustration with the crossposts of the Moody story disrupting the kinds of tweets they were expecting.
(Via GalleyCat.)
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:16 am
Spamming people with ads for your book doesn’t work. Building relationships with potential customers does work. This isn’t about Twitter at all.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:27 am
Jon: Yep, information needs to be of genuine interest to readers if you’re going to build a relationship that can lead to sales. But even that strategy does not always seem to work. David
December 3rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Twitter has blown my mind with the amount of traffic I’ve been able to direct to my free sample of the novel. How many of those viewers turn into sales of the hard copy? Less than 1% I’m guessing. You can lead a horse to water …
Still, if you’re patient and in for the long haul, you can use it to build a following beyond just the environs of Twitterland.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Social networks are social networks, not PR platforms. You’re building relationships, only not just with potential customers. I frequently seek advice from fellow authors. And I got a large surge of interest after one of them re-tweeted one of my announcements.
Unless your tweets are hitting millions of people, they’re not going to lead to a lot of sales.