Twitter-Is it Quantity or Quality?

I read an interesting article today by Michel Fortin about Twitter and the debate over auto-following people who follow you. Some folks say that it is polite to do so. Others say that it is nonsensical–you wouldn’t give out your telephone number to a complete stranger, so why would you give a stranger the ability to Direct Message (DM) you, just because they “said” they were interested in you by following you.

Regardless of which camp you fall in, I think there is an important thing to note here for writers. We are all quite aware of the state of publishing today and how hard it is to get published. And the even harder task a published author has in finding and keeping enough readers to make his book sales look good to a publisher. Especially given the general lack of money and support that a publisher will put forth for a book in the midlist.

Two Jobs

For authors in the midlist, they have twin tasks now–writing a great book AND finding enough readers to buy it. I believe that an author’s promotional activities will continue to be of increasing importance if they want to remain a published author.

Twitter is one of the ways that a writer can seek out and find potential readers for her books. And that gets us back to the debate at hand on auto-following. Writers want the largest following possible because each follower represents a potential book sale, right? But can you really equate follower numbers with sales? I don’t think so.

If you spend your time auto-following every person who follows you, what kind of connection do you have with that person? They are essentially a stranger to you, unless you’ve taken the time to open up a conversation and get to know the person behind the tweets. And let’s not forget, how often have you bought something because a complete stranger recommended it? Not often, I think.

On the other hand, how likely are you to purchase something that a friend has recommended to you? In the case of a book, a friend’s recommendation is the #1 reason a person will buy a book that wasn’t on their radar previously. (I’m paraphrasing this a bit from the informal survey that JA Konrath did a while back, which I can’t find now.)

If you have a friend or someone you like and trust who just happens to be a writer with a book coming out, how likely are you to purchase it as a show of support? I buy books written by my friends for that reason. And also because I love the books they write.

Collect Friends, Not Faceless Crowds

The key to Twitter seems to be not how many followers you can accummulate, but rather how many new friends you can make. Real friends, people you like and want to talk with. For a writer, I can’t think of a better way to increase the potential for book sales, then by reaching out to other people to start conversations and get to know them. Twitter is one way to do that… one person at a time.

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