Support for Indie Authors discussion

Ken wrote: "Here's something to think about. I just had to reformat my computer because of a stealth program that took control of my browser and hijacked the search engine to Yahoo. While I was reformatting an..."

Hey Ken,

I can well believe it - Twitter drives a lot of traffic to our websites as well. And changing up the type of tweets that I might post on a particular day - for example, today might be short film related, or music or photography - will influence the numbers.

I'm happy that Twitter is working for you.

Alp

Personally think that promoting books every other minute, with the same add, is just counter-productive. I do believe that it's a good tool in building an audience by introducing your-author-self.

My computer gets really slow with it. It takes eternity to change from one list to another...I also hope they keep it at 140 characters.

Katja wrote: "Personally think that promoting books every other minute, with the same add, is just counter-productive. I do believe that it's a good tool in building an audience by introducing your-author-self.
..."

I agree. Twitter has an absurd limit of 2400 tweets allowed per account per day. (Source: https://support.twitter.com/articles/...) I certainly understand that some larger corporations may need this to handle customer service tweets, but if they were to limit unique tweets to even 100 per day, the spam problem might be slightly alleviated.

Understand that just because people aren't unfollowing, doesn't mean they are paying attention. They could be using a service to see onky what they want. They might be using lists or notificatiins to see what they consider important, or they might even be muting.

I use Twitter daily and I have found that CoPromote (its free) has been ubber helpful
Here's the link:
http://awe.sm/wFPP
I have gotten way more reach with it and met some pretty cool people :)

Ana wrote: "I use Twitter daily and I have found that CoPromote (its free) has been ubber helpful
Here's the link:
http://awe.sm/wFPP
I have gotten way more reach with it and met some pretty cool people :)"

This application will be able to:

Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.
See your email address.

Yikes. I never sign up for any app that says it will be able to change my profile or post things without my knowledge or permission. Seems like that's just asking for trouble.

Joe wrote: "Ana wrote: "I use Twitter daily and I have found that CoPromote (its free) has been ubber helpful
Here's the link:
http://awe.sm/wFPP
I have gotten way more reach with it and met some pretty cool ..."

You have to give it permission. It doesn't just post things I set the settings so it didn't. It just helps match tweets you might like to re-tweet based on your interests. You only re-tweet what you want to re-tweet. I know several authors who use it without issues.

I'm a big fraidy cat when it comes to apps like that, haha.

To each their own lol I am having fun with it :) It is a heck of a lot better than the ones who charge and never deliver on anything I figure it is at least not a financial investment :)

Much ground has already been covered. Thanks everyone.
The value I find with Twitter is the ability to engage with readers. Readers like to have a connection to authors they like.
I use tweets to talk about the writing process, the research I do for my next publication, my accomplishments as a writer, and the like. It's a way to keep existing readers interested in my work and it provides potential new readers with a way to find my via keyword searches (hashtags, etc.).
It also allows writers within a genre to find each other and keep track of one another's work. Authors who support each other can cross-tweet one another's posts.
In summary, books don't read themselves. People read books. Readers can connect with authors they like on Twitter. Overall, Twitter is a worthwhile effort.