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Jan 20, 2014

A letter to authors using Twitter

Dear Self promoting authors,

I know that its a hard road you are travelling and I know that when you started this writing gig you thought that along with the six figure advance you were going to get all sorts of marketing flunkies that would pimp your book.  Commiserations on finding out that isn’t the case.  I’ll wait while you drown your sorrows in that no-name brand coffee you swiped from the diner.

So you have hit the road hard, dagnamit if you are not going to pull off a miracle while promoting your own book.  You’ve set up the website and the Facebook page and you have found out about Twitter, maybe even paid a little money to buy some marketing software that allows you to auto follow and auto DM other twitter users with form messages masquerading as sincere personalised tweets.  Maybe it looks impressive to a potential agent if you have 3000 followers who you never interact with?

To me this is the equivalent of Junk mail or some crazy dude handing me a flyer at the mall.

I am a reviewer of fiction.  One of the ways I discern who I should read, who I should pick out of the surge of competent authors is by: following and listening to you, the way you behave, how you treat others, how you interact.

So when I get a follow from an author I generally follow back and slip you onto one of my lists.  If after a while I notice you are an interesting tweeter, I might look at the blog or webpage you have cunningly put in your bio (do this, it’s a great idea).

What puts me off more than anything though is the gall of someone who decides that Twitter is a one way street that their time is so precious they will only post promo tweets and and use DM’s to drive people to their website.  What galls me even more is that these authors won’t even read this letter.

I am fricken galled dagnamit.

So I am going to be calm and collected and from now on if you follow me and I follow back and you send me a DM like this :

 

Hi, thanks for following - very nice to meet you! You can find out more about me and my books via /authorimnotgonnaread.com. Best wishes.

 

I will report you for SPAM.  Not only will I do that but for gits and shiggles I am going to institute a hall of shame.  I will publically name you so that when people google your name they will understand that your only interested in self promotion, not engaging with readers or community.

You are warned.


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Comments (12)

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Sue Bursztynski's avatar

Sue Bursztynski · 581 weeks ago

Very true, Sean! I've never had the DM, but I've been known to drop authors whose entire tweet production is self- promo. Most of the ones I am following are delightful folk who are interesting to read. I'll do the occasional self promo, but only occasional. And it's aimed at friends. That said, I do Twitter as a tool. It tells me when an event I want to attend is on at the Wheeler Centre. There are teachers out there with stuff to share and publishers advertising anthologies for which they want submissions and blog updates(I use it for my own blog updates).
My recent post Free Ebook From Peggy Bright Books!
1 reply · active 581 weeks ago
The vast majority of genre authors don't do what I am describing. I don't even mind if people pimp there stuff 6 times a day, spread out for example.
Stop beating around the bush Sean. I want to know what you really think...

-m

ps couldn't agree more.

My recent post Bloody Waters by Jason Franks – review
1 reply · active 581 weeks ago
I thought I was quite reserved :D
Awesome post! When I first started blogging about books, some time ago now, the online book world was a community of readers and writers, real conversations occurred, now it seems to be about shameless self promotion. What amazes me is that people who indulge in this kind of promotion think it works, maybe it does but mostly it just makes me switch off and avoid that author and their books.
My recent post "Oh... what a lot of parties."
1 reply · active 581 weeks ago
I do wonder if there is a guidebook being sold to authors advising them that this is the way to go ie get heaps of follows and carpet bomb them with BUY MY BOOK or visit my website.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSS! I am quite happy if people promo their book/new release/sale/post/article/etc through the day, in fact I appreciate it. I want to know when the people I follow have something new they've done. It is part of why I follow them. But if I see practically the same promo tweet within an hour of another.... grrr. It's fine/good to have such posts spaced out through the day so you catch different people online, but if I see three tweets in 15 minutes about the same thing from the same author, I get the urge stab forks in eyes. If I get an auto-dm I unfollow IMMEDIATELY - because: &*%$ off. The people who do those are 100% of the time the same people who I have no interest following because they will not have conversations, they will not curate interesting feeds, they will not do anything other than irritate me.
*breathes*
My recent post Survival of the fittest
1 reply · active 581 weeks ago
A new one just in today, sending a DM advertising a blog post on how he made 300,000 sales. :@

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