I was one of the MAD men.
In the decade before I turned to writing, I worked in advertising agencies, and spent at least $20 million dollars of clients’ money on print and TV advertising, mostly with good results I’m proud to say.
During my journey along the ‘avenue’, I saw a ton of promotional spending by publishers trying to kick-start sales of their latest books.
You see, books become bestsellers largely via word-of-mouth recommendation, but a critical mass of initial readers is needed to get that wild-fire process started. So publishers often paid for an opening burst of expensive publicity to get the ball rolling.
But times have changed. For the increasing numbers of authors who e-publish their own books, spending a fortune on promotion isn’t a realistic option. They need a way to achieve this initial ‘critical mass’ without having to sell the family silver.
Similarly, traditional publishing houses are no longer willing to spend money on promoting new authors. Instead, they actively seek out and choose to publish new authors who demonstrate they can get the ball rolling themselves.
So what’s the solution?
Enter Twitter – The Greatest Word-of-Mouth Marketing Tool Ever Created
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have noticed Twitter popping up everywhere in the media. It has recently expanded to well beyond 100 million active users. In fact, it brings visitors every day to this very blog you are reading. (Maybe that’s how you arrived here?)
I consider Twitter to be the greatest word-of-mouth marketing tool ever created – something I would have killed to have had at my disposal back in my Mad Men days.
But more importantly, it’s a God-send for authors who don’t have a large budget, and who don’t want to be a pushy ‘salesperson’.
How Twitter Works For Authors
The real keys to Twitter’s power are its viral power and its community-building ability, both of which can help bring readers flocking to your books.
When you’ve written a great book, readers tell other readers about it. Classic ‘social proof’ kicks in: “If other people are raving about it, then it must be good. I’d better read it too.”
With over 100 million people all around the world interacting and chatting to each other on Twitter, the potential for this viral spread is incredible.
But here’s the best bit – if you know how to use Twitter properly, you can achieve this promotional effect without having to be a pushy ‘marketer’. You won’t get anywhere by constantly spamming people with “Buy my book!” tweets, that is a complete waste of time.
Instead, by actively participating in the book community on Twitter and forming friendships and connections there, you can achieve long-lasting publicity for your books without ever having to ‘sell’ at all.
It’s all about carefully building up a community of the right followers on Twitter – readers, book bloggers, other authors and publishing industry people.
Nuturing Your Followers Stores Up ‘Reciprocity’
The secret sauce that builds support for your books is the power of reciprocity – the returning of favors.
You store up goodwill by continually going out of your way to Tweet about your key followers, plus leave supportive comments on their blogs, and generally help them along their pathways. When it’s time to launch your book, they’ll pay back by recommending your work and sending tweets about it to their own communities.
It’s the power of reciprocation, because it’s human nature to want to ‘return the favor’. This is your community in action, which is where Twitter is supremely effective.
Real Life Example: How Twitter Helped A Cartoonist Break Free & Cartoon Full Time
This Twitter ‘community in action’ strategy has been a major force behind the success of social-commentary cartoonist Hugh McLeod.
A mere few years ago he was quite literally a nobody in terms of visibility. But over three years he gradually built up a platform of Twitter friends, who are now helping him successfully promote his new cartoon book – ‘Freedom Is Blogging in Your Underwear
Hugh tweeted recently “I knew that if I got my material in enough places that word-of-mouth would eventually kick in.”
It certainly did ‘kick in’. Hugh is now one of the most popular cartoonists on the planet.
Good Things Take Time
Even with the help of Twitter, author success takes time. Cartoonist Hugh McLeod didn’t just pop up and start tweeting ‘Buy my book!’. He built his presence, relationships and community over several years. And this is now starting to bear fruit.
Your writing ability and style needs to develop, and Twitter (and other online assets) need to mirror this by steadily growing at the same pace.
If you’re interested in learning how to do this the right way, my Twitter for Authors mini-course covers everything you need to know.
For those of you who are e-publishing your own books, it’s a remarkably easy way to increase your sales. You’ll become familiar, then fascinating to readers, and they’ll increasingly talk about you and your books. And that is the point at which having a bestseller really does start to become a reality.
And for those of you looking to get a traditional book deal, a visible Twitter following says to the publisher that you are the one they should pick, as you are willing and capable of helping ignite the sales process.
Do you use Twitter to promote your books? Do you think Twitter is more useful for authors than Facebook? Do leave a comment below.
Article written by Jonathan Gunson
Author / CEO Bestseller Labs
Notice: This article is copyrighted material. Reproduction of brief snippets of this article with a link to this site are permitted, but it may not be reproduced in full anywhere without the written permission of Jonathan Gunson at BestsellerLabs.com
I follow other writers on Twitter, and have a following of 2400 after my first year. Not as many followers as you Jonathan LOL. My idea is that they will help me promote my crime-genre book when I publish it on Amazon Kindle next year. Will you be posting about the how to sell books on the Kindle?
Loved Mad Men! Don Draper would have liked Twitter over Facebook because of the instant feedback.
Publishing on the Amazon Kindle is in our Bestseller Labs pipeline. Keep me posted re your book Jason, and of course, catch me on Twitter. I live there.
Thanks for the great advice. I avoided Twitter for personal use, it seemed so trivial. But as an author, it’s a great way to connect with people. I keep my personal stuff away from it and only tweet writerly stuff.
Perfect understanding of Twitter Ann Marie. ‘Writerly stuff’, without pitching your books directly.
Hi Jonathan,
I use Twitter, Facebook and (to a far lesser degree) Google+. I have my own website and linked blogsite (www.rhardie.com and http://richardhardies.blogspot.co.uk/). I post to my blog most days and have a regular community that reads it. Whenever I post I always create a link to the blog post via the three social network tools I mentioned and always ask people to share, or RT if they find the posting interesting. I must admit I use FB more than Twitter and although I mention my books I tend now to help other authors promote their work. For instance Lakshmi Raj Sharma, professor of English at Allahabad University in India has written books and his latest is a series of short stories about the culture and generational problems in his country. Kindle is not common in India and even credit cards are not the norm, so I am helping him promote his work in the West on FB, with interviews and with extracts posted on my blog.
Your point about ramming our own books down people’s throat is very well made. It’s a bit like cold-calling on the phone. We turn right off!
Richard, highly insightful and interesting points thanks, especially re the Indian Author you are helping.
I use the same social media trio of Twitter / FB / G+ to announce posts and then interact – just as you do. But Twitter has the most impact for me by far. So many interesting people there. It’s how I came across unknown indie author Lorna Suzuki. Her ‘Imago’ books, as you will know, are now being made into a trilogy of movies.
http://bestsellerlabs.com/interview-with-indie-author-lorna-suzuki/
Hi Jonathan,
great article as ever
Another excellent use of twitter is the opportunity to engage and build your following of raving fans.
One example close to home. I bought my daughter Flip It by Michael Hepple. Last weekend Michaela was reading the book on a rare sunny day in the North East of England and decided to send me a pic of the book as a thank you and also ‘tweeted’ this to her friends.
Within a matter of minutes she received a tweet back from the author Michael Hepple, saying it was the best picture of the book he had seen and thanking her for sharing with her twitter followers.
My daughter was super excited about this and not only contacted me, she also told her friends, many of who asked what the book was about and where they could grab it.
With that one twitter reply, Michael Hepple has another fan for life in my daughter and who knows how many other fans from the social media activities as Michaela told those she knows.
I know I posted this on my Facebook page so that probably got him a few more readers as well
Anyway, just wanted to share this with you… Oh I guess this is also spreading Michael Hepple’s good deed even further
All the best
Phil Henderson
A heartwarming and charming story Phil. How lucky you are.
Michaela will remember Michael Hepple for the rest of her life. This simple tale also says rather a lot about Twitter.
Good post. I’m still stunned that there are people in the publishing/writing community who need to be told how to use Twitter. I use it and Facebook, although I have yet to be convinced that my author page on FB is any use!
True Lesley. Twitter ‘Luddites’ still abound in the publishing industry. Re Facebook, a ‘page’ is quite a conundrum. Very limited in functionality. One cannot interact so easily. e.g. Can’t leave comments on people’s personal accounts.
Nicely constructed argument and examples in Twitter’s favour. As above, I have tried to keep Twitter exclusively for book marketing use, but am guilty of the “buy my book” type tweets. I have noticed that tweeting pictures from the books via Pinterest seem to generate more sales than just a straight tweet linked to a blog or purchase site. I did get a prize for the 1st novel (Any Means to an End – The Lost Diaries of Richard Buchanan) from Rosetta Press and have let them do some links to my book from their web page/blog. The other place is FrontRowLit where they take a synopsis, 2000 word excerpt and the front cover and they do free publicity. BookBuzzr from Freado was another free widget for the blog to allow readers to sample larger segments of the book, though I have no way of measuring its impact on sales of the paperback or Kindle version. The Kindle reports allow me to see purchases of the e- version and that can be linked to Tweets of the images from Pinterest usually. Annoyingly I do wish more folks would complete the reviews on Kindle as well as telling me they enjoyed the book so that others can read their views when about to make the purchase.
For example one reader (an ex-sailor) was amazed and delighted as the memories stirred and accuracy of my descriptions of harbours and places in the Caribbean and elsewhere that I had never visited in the flesh. He had the paperback and has re-read the book several times. Rosetta Press described the proof reading of the follow-up novel (Protective Craft – The Lost Diaries of Richard Buchanan) as an enjoyable experience, and others have said it showed improved development in style and characters.
As you say, it is about getting the message out that the books are a great read to a critical level without the author having to repeat the message. Self promotion is “tacky” but sometimes the author has to blow their own trumpet as no-one else going to do it for them. You just have to learn how to blow the trumpet in a beautiful way to hold everyone’s attention.
Intriguing story Andrew.
Interesting to see that you’re finding a variety of promotional sources is working for you. Pinterest giving direct sales result is a chunk of proof that’s good to know. ‘Owning more of the internet’ certainly pays off.
Thanks Johnathan
I think Twitter is great. I have my FB Author Page linked to my Twitter feed so I feel like I’m hitting both on a regular basis.
I agree with you about supporting each other. It is very much give and take.
Great post
Melissa. Yes, linking it all up is a great strategy. Some might say it looks repetitive. I say it’s more effective. Keep on.
This is an interesting article. Two things I’d love to see addressed, perhaps in a future post:
1) How do you use twitter to better-connect with the readers? If one tweets following the guidelines established here, I would imagine you’d primarily hit other writers and industry pros — all well and good — but shouldn’t the target be the readers?
2) How do you leverage this tool with a limited amount of time available?
Thanks!
Jonathan
I’ll be posting about ‘finding readers on Twitter’ in the near future. It’s in the hopper.
Regarding time constraints – I do two 15 minute sessions a day on Twitter – I call those the ‘Twitter 15 minutes of Fame’. I go into this in depth in my Twitter For Authors course. But to get you started, one needs to follow a set series of simple disciplined actions. For example, I choose a 2-3 new people every day to swap Tweets with briefly. That has a dramatic cumulative effect.
I just started using Jonathan’s methods on twitter and have already seen success! Like he mentioned, it is the best way to connect with fans and collegues all over the world at no cost! It just takes time and I think that is the biggest challenge for any new published writer is to be patient. My first book, A Soccer Life in Shorts took over a year to really get some traction and start selling well. Now it is doing well and every month is better than the last!
Mark. I appreciate the props thank you. The growing success of your book ‘A Soccer Life in Shorts’
(apart from the quality of the book itself) clearly comes from your focus on promotional tactics – especially Twitter. But I suspect you’ve also used some other tactics as well. Publishing can be a very ‘political’ business.
I’ve started using Twitter right from the beginning when I first started writing my current book. I agree the instant feedback is wonderful. A book writer especially needs positive feedback and constructive criticism as their story unfolds. The support that I have found through Twitter is much better than what I have found using Facebook. These individuals that I have found through Twitter are my audience and I know when the book is finished they will pass it along to their respective circles.
Allison, I’m going to steal your words and recycle them.
Quote: “On Twitter … instant feedback is wonderful. A book writer especially needs positive feedback and constructive criticism as their story unfolds”. Agree. It’s one of the primary values of Twitter for any writer.
To be honest, I do get more joy out of commenting on others’ tweets, as opposed to posting my own one-of-a-kind and absolutely brilliant (ahem!) bon mots!
Jonathan,
Great article and 100% true! Twitter is a wonderful tool for not only marketing your book, but also for fostering relationships with kindred souls. I’m learning everyday, especially since my first book was released, that these things take time, and patience and perseverance are the watchwords of the independent author. Thanks for the great advice.
Re “… time, and patience and perseverance” as watchwords. In the marketing space one does need to steadily work, but also to be constantly pro-active. Constantly spying and taking action when you see ‘unfair’ advantages. e.g. Surfing your book on a news story, getting to know an influential book reviewer. Box clever, move quickly yes?
Don’t get me wrong Jonathan, when I speak of patience and perseverance, I don’t mean to be nonchalant and let opportunity pass you by. By all means, grab the bull by the horns. What I meant was that things don’t happen overnight, but that through patience, opportunities will present themselves to bring about success. Thanks again for the great advice you give to all of us.
Agree serendipity does play a big part. Doors of opportunity will open unexpectedly for almost any writer if they’re actively ‘moving along the corridor’.
I self published my first novel. Had a traditional publisher for my second novel “Going Green”. Marketing was the same for both. 100% my responsibility. I am a Twitter rookie but agree with you. This is where it’s at for authors. I am embarrassed to admit, I already did some “buy my book” tweets. They were worthless as you say here. Will certainly look into your course!
Re ‘Buy my book’ tweets: We all have to start somewhere. I suspect we’re looking for a megaphone at first.
Interesting post. I’ve been thinking of putting Facebook aside and just focusing on Twitter as there are only so many hours in the day.
Jonathan – why do you think Twitter has been more effective for you than Facebook?
Hi Jennifer. Immediacy of reaction is one of the main advantages of Twitter. The person you’re connect with is usually live – right there. It’s verging on conversation. Other than the ‘chat’ function, Facebook is like a series of phone messages that you pick up later. I feel that real-time human connection has a lot to do with it don’t you?.
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Love your blog. Hope you don’t mind but I’ve added it to my blog roll on mine, so that my smaller readership can enjoy your insights as well. There’s so much free advice on the web these days, it’s refreshing to come across some that’s at a practical level from someone whose been there, done that, rather than just a lot of theorizing. Will definitely be back for more! Cheers, Kaz
The blog roll inclusion is much appreciated Kaz.
Great advice! As a new indie author, I appreciate the insight. Fairly new to twitter here, so I found this very helpful
thanks
Just read this, along with a few other of your articles. I’ve been using twitter, though admittedly not well, and I’m wondering how I use it to actually find people interested in buying my book and not just people interested in selling me theirs. I can’t complain too much since I’m also looking to sell, but so far it isn’t going anywhere fast.
Brendan
Re “Finding readers on Twitter” (Not other writers.) I’ll be putting out a post on this topic in the next couple of weeks. Stand by.
I’ve favorited your site. Articles are great. Thanks.
Hello Jonathan;
Just read this article and it contains so much good advice. Looking forward to reading your other informative discussions. I am a self publisher that has written my first book: Natanz: The Final Notice. I am relying on word of mouth and will follow your advice.
Thank you so very much;
Jason Kramer
Finalnoticepublications.com
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for an informative post. My husband has self-published two novels and is just finishing up editing his third and fourth books. I’ve agreed to start helping him market and somehow started following you on Twitter.
I’m sure I’ll be back to visit your site and look for more tips.
Tanel
Tanel. I’m writing more book promotion ‘how to’ posts. Stay tuned.
I just said in my twitter profile honestly that book isn’t finished yet and that I intend to publish on Smashwords and if they like it a bit to please follow. I tried to be very polite and respectful and I think it paid of.
I collected almost two thousand followers (readers of genre, bloggers,reviewers,even some people from industry alone). I think it is better then face because it is easier to follow and i think word spreads faster. I put one good (best) quote from my book in profile description and people are occasionally asking me where they can buy book. I always thank them and explain it’s not out yet but it gives me big smile every time. I do twit same twit often but it because it is the one that got me most followers. Also i RT every day, many times a day and some people are really regular about returning favor. I would recommend RT-ing and using hash tags to new writers on twitter.
Jonathan, I stumbled across your website in a search for help on marketing Sacramento Stories, Volume One. It’s my virgin venture into self-publishing using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Platform. Question: how can Twitter help with getting book reviewers to publish reviews of one’s work? …Excellent blog by the way and very useful comments from your readers. Thanks for your free advice! Much appreciated, Francis Ginter
Francis. Twitter is part of the interactive communication process you would use over a period to become familiar to a book blogger or reviewer as described in this blog post:
http://bestsellerlabs.com/how-to-get-massive-free-publicity-for-your-book/
-Jonathan
Hello Jonathan, We just started our Twitter account last night! Hoping our book will be ready to go by April. Personally, I like using twitter much better than Facebook! Short “bites” seem to reach more viewers. Also are you using Instagram as a means of communication? Fascinating outreach, all sorts of commercial links, great pictures, real time commentary and global contacts. We’re so new at this, but with a 100+ combined years of motherhood experience between us, haha…hopefully, we’ll get the hang of promoting our new book in no time! We anticipate an extraordinary #JustOrdinaryMoms following. Thank you for your tips! Best, Maureen
Maureen
I prefer using Twitter for similar reasons:brevity, and also its immediacy. Facebook however reaches the entire marketplace. Twitter only 10-20%. Re Instagram, I’m highly interested in that service, although I also try to avoid becoming spread too thinly across Social Media channels. But if it works for you, then DO MORE of it. Plus build your own email list off your blog while these free services are available. (Who knows where the future of Twitter / Facebook / Instagram lies? Think MySpace.) See this post on avoiding becoming a social media train wreck.
http://bestsellerlabs.com/social-media-train-wreck-that-authors-must-avoid/
Jonathan