USA Today reported recently how a number of writers are using Twitter to help market their books. Among the examples:
"•The Other Boleyn Girl author Philippa Gregory is writing a series of tweets this week in the voice of Elizabeth Woodville, the queen in her new novel, The White Queen.
•The roll-out of Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing, Book 6 in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, will include a program called "Tweet the Galaxy" that allows fans to submit messages that will be beamed into space on Oct. 12.
•Romantic suspense author Jayne Ann Krentz is writing a "micro-novel" on Twitter, with tweets from her detective protagonist. His last tweet comes just before the publication of her new novel, Fired Up, on Dec. 29."
Less clear is whether using Twitter sells books by authors who, unlike the ones mentioned above, don't already have a following. Getting eyeballs to your website or blog or ears to your podcast remains the biggest challenge for writers. Using the social media can be fun and can pay off, but it also eats heavily into the time you need for writing. My suggestion: pick one outlet and put most of your energy into it, at least at first.
And one author who isn't Tweeting is historical novelist Tracy Chevalier, who told The Independent that she doesn't use Twitter because life is too short. "I don't think my readers, or what I know of them, would expect me to Tweet," she said. "Maybe people can Tweet about my books."
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