ROBUST discussion

I've never really thought that twittering was worth the time. I know I did sell one book early on to an American woman I'd exchanged quite a few twitters with before I published, but I didn't think my occasional book posts had any effect.

This week, as an experiment, I've been plugging Treespeaker from Smashwords on a regular basis - about twice a day. Lovely people like Amos have been retweeting for me, but not on any huge scale. I haven't actually sold any books, but in five days I've gone from close to no looks at my book to 80 yesterday. Even without the sales, that has to be good doesn't it? I read somewhere the other day that people need to see something 7 times before it begins to really stick in their mind, so this is a start.

On top of that, I've had about 30 new follows in those 5 days - a huge number for me.

So I'll keep plugging. By the way, I will always try to repay a retweet with another.

Of all the various networking tools, Twitter is that can be very effective in establishing networks (which isn't necessarily a direct sales thing, but it certainly helps) for not all that much effort.

That is, the Twitter culture is such that popping up tweeting around for a while and disappearing without continuing some long conversation is not considered rude. The very thing that some people despise it for makes it easy to use.

The key is to interact with people and not just be pure broadcast. Establish those connections and all that.

Of course, it just kind comes naturally if you're genuinely interacting with people. I've always approached twitter as, "Let's make some friends and interesting acquaintances, and whatever else happens is just sugar on top."

I don't totally agree with everything he says, but Nathan Lowell on KB has some pretty good thoughts about Twitter, the best way to use it, et cetera.

Of course, this goes to a more central point. All of these networking tools, in a sense, work. Twitter, Facebook, LibraryThing, Goodreads, forums, blogs, podcasting, newspaper interviews, et cetera. There's just no individual one that an author can concentrate on. Invariably every author I see selling well is someone I see in different around in different networking contexts.

That's why everyone can say about any individual networking channel and say its pointless and be partially right and partially wrong.

I find Twitter fun and easy. So I use it. Whether it'll end up selling books for me will be established here in a month or so.

Eyes on your work is always a good thing!

I suspect Twitter works like radio in days of yore. I used to love doing radio shows around the world from a deep armchair in my study. Efficient, fast, enjoyable, and by the second or third time round it sold noticeable quantities of books and never stopped selling for me. But the organisation is horrendous and would keep four or five people busy for a week for every five hours I spent on the phone. And you can't do it with just anyone hired from a temp agency, you need experienced pre-producers in the room with you to work the phones and schedule you. The PR department also hated it because it isn't glamorous, like a big personality spread in one of the national Sunday papers, just hard, grinding work, for a bunch of chats that disappeared into the ether.

Is there any radio show in the US these days that interviews authors (other than on NPR)? I know John Philpin has done some with a California radio host, but that was because his books happened to be true crime titles involving local crimes.

Several times I've purchased a book after listening to the author's interview on NPR. Their leisurely discussions and usually quite interesting.

I don't know. These weren't necessarily book shows. I'd talk about whatever the jock wanted to talk about, He took the respondent his producer gave him. That was the point of borrowing people from the ad agencies' spot booking and radio production departments to be my pre-producers, that they know how to speak to these producers or, if they're self-important, the accountants in charge of them.

I should have kept my mouth shut. The three star review I received a couple of months ago (the one that told people not to bother buying my book) has just been posted to Smashwords. It wouldn't matter if it was one of many, but it's one of only three, one of which is only one line long.

Why do I jinx myself this way?

Well, one way to look at it is that Smashwords is a very low-volume sales channel (at least Smashwords directly, and the reviews don't migrate, at least last time I checked), so I don't really know how much that's going to hurt you.

What Jeremy said about Twitter on post #2 is mostly how I feel. And it is the funnest (I used to knock my kids upside the head when they used that non-word, but it works in the abbreviated society in which we now live - though I would not use it in person, lol), easiest, often most efifying of all social media. Though I sometimes don't visit for days on end, Twitter really suits my curious mind and I love it!

I almost never make the first move to follow and don't care one whit about numbers of followers. I'd rather have 10 quality connections than 2000 silly ones. I do go in and weed out some followers if they are spamming. And I am getting very annoyed at those who follow me, I follow them back, and then as soon as I do, they unfollow. I have the free Tweeter installed but will probably buy the upgrade in the new year ~ I think it has the capacity to bump off those who do that automatically. Otherwise I don't worry if someone I do make the effort to follow does not follow me back, as I have usually taken the time to make sure they are interesting.

Be sure to follow CatFoodBreath.

Done. {{grin}}

Sharon,

I've found the tool http://thetwitcleaner.com/ useful.

Thanks, Jeremy! I shall download soon.

It's a web tool actually (uses oAuthTwitter).

What does it mean by 'can post tweets for you', J.a.?
I don't particularly want it to put tweets out for me.

It won't post tweets unless you tell it to. Basically, it's just saying from the TweetClean interface that you can post tweets (such as posting tweets about your reports). I've used the thing since it came out, and it's never put out a tweet that I didn't specifically tell it to.

Katie wrote: "What does it mean by 'can post tweets for you', J.a.?
I don't particularly want it to put tweets out for me."

They all say that, so I too would like to know what it means.

J.a. wrote: "Sharon,

I've found the tool http://thetwitcleaner.com/ useful."

Thanks, Jeremy. I tried it on myself. The programme found me a good Tweetscape citizen, in its hyperbole, "awesome". Gee.

But if you're really worried you can just authorize the app, run the report, then deauthorize it the second you're done.

Basically, oAuth is an interface protocol so other tools can layer over Twitter. Part of oAuth means approving that other tool and giving it the ability, potentially, send tweets. It doesn't mean that tool will though.

That being said, being wary of the tools you oAuth is always a good default behavior.

Thanks, J.a. I'll try it.

I always have the same problem with Facebook apps. They seem to want to know way too much, or be able to do way too much. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

When you're giving over your life, allowing unknown people to post messages in your name, of course you're paranoid. You'd be nuts to to take care.

Interesting who it pulled out for various 'misdemeanours'. But I'm 'awesome' so that's cool!

Hehe.

I'm awesome too! Who knew?

I did!

Awww, thanks Katie.

Me too. I don't need some app to tell me you're all awesome.

I ditto that sentiment. No accident we all arrived here now...

I have two twitter accounts and both are awesome, so I'm double awesome. Got ya all beat.

(Sharon, check your GoodReads messages.)