Last week GalleyCat readers fiercely debated Twitter’s usefulness as a bookselling tool. Following an online conversation about Electric Literature‘s Twitter experiment, our readers left these important thoughts…
Guy L. Gonzalez wrote: “Twitter can certainly sell books, but if that’s the only (or even primary) reason you’re using it, you’re going to sorely disappointed.” Molly at HarperOne elaborated: “If you’re able to send messages that readers can connect with, then yes, you’ll sell books. I’ve had followers let me know they’ve pre-ordered a book based on messages in our Twitter feed.”
Dorothy Parka had these thoughts: “Here’s something a lot of authors and publicists don’t seem to get–as a reader, I don’t want to be advertised to all the time. If all a twitter feed provides is links to interviews and reviews, or noise about a book, it’s pretty useless to me.”
Ernie Zelinski noted: “I have a motto: Whatever becomes a fad, stay away. So it’s okay with me that a lot of my competitors are trying to sell books on Twitter, while I use much more creative ways to sell books.”
Finally, Kristen McLean had this suggestion: “I do believe there is a way to cultivate an audience of readers downstream, but it requires you to: a) adjust your profile to say ‘I broadcast interesting ideas about great books you might like to read;’ b) that you actually adopt that persona in your downstream feed to attract those followers; 3) that you cultivate a ‘network awareness’ of how to be useful in this context. This may mean that you use that profile only for book reviews and create another user ID for larger industry discussions.”