Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich scored a book deal with Regnery Publishing today, but the conservative writer has earned some Twitter-influence as well–he is also the third most popular Twitter user with the word “author” in their profile.
As part of our unscientific literary Twitter survey via TweepSearch, we found that television host and author Chelsea Handler leads the list with 1,939,114 followers. Here are the top five self-identified authors on Twitter, according to TweepSearch:
1. Chelsea Handler
2. Brandon Mendelson
3. Newt Gingrich
4. Joe Trippi
5. Jack Welch
Here are some more Twitter-stats for your afternoon pleasure. According to simple TweepSearch queries, there are 1,790 novelists, 9,139 poets, 19,490 journalists, 28,529 authors, and a staggering 99,082 writers on Twitter. The publishing world latched on to the microblogging site in 2009, as Twitter writers scored book deals, serialized stories, and saw their work adapted to film. Finally, eBookNewser opened its Twitter page for business.
Visit eBookNewser for some digital publishing Twitter numbers. Editor’s Note: Chelsea Handler’s name was incorrectly cited in an earlier version of this post.