You might have noticed the recent appearance of a little box in the sidebar headed “Newsletter”. Perhaps you’ve already typed in your email address to sign up, or perhaps you’ve just ignored it, thinking ugh, spam!

I hope you’ve done the first one; you’d have been quite wrong to do the second. You see, our first newsletter comes out next month. It’s a quick roundup of the month on The Fiction Desk, revisiting a couple of things you might have missed. There are extra odds and ends and mini-reviews, all in a neat little monthly “mark it unread and read it later” package. (Keep reading …)

It can be interesting to watch the subtleties of marketing change between different editions of the same book. From covers to titles to apparent target audience, dramatic changes take place as books move across oceans. David Vann‘s Legend of a Suicide is a good example: in the US, it’s a collection of short stories built around a central novella; in its UK edition, published by Penguin, it’s a novel. Neither description is inaccurate. (Keep reading …)

I don’t want to cover Twitter too much on this site, but having written a brief introduction to Twitter for authors, I wanted to take a quick look at an aspect of Twittering that affects publishers.

As Twitter becomes an increasingly powerful tool for book publicists – although the jury is out as to how powerful it might get – established Twitter accounts themselves are going to become increasingly valuable commodities. A well managed Twitter account could have the ear of thousands of potential customers, journalists, bloggers, and other useful contacts. These kinds of accounts often represent a considerable investment of time and energy, and have a significant value. (Anybody want to guess what @stephenfry‘s account is worth? The man can probably knock a smaller website offline just by mentioning it.) (Keep reading …)

More and more authors, from unpublished novices to international heavyweights, are getting involved with Twitter. If you’re planning to join them, here are some tips for good author tweeting:

Setting up your account

• Be yourself, not your book. In the short term, it may seem like a good idea to set up your Twitter account as the title of your book, but it’s probably better to use your own name instead. There are two reasons for this:
  1. People are more likely to respond to a person than a book – it feels less like advertising, and it’s more natural to build a relationship with a person.
  2. Think long term. If you do get followers for this book, what happens when your next one comes out? Do you change the account details, confusing people, or open a new Twitter account for the new book, and start again from scratch? Tweet as yourself, and your account can grow with you through your whole career.

  (You can still promote your latest book as part of your identity – in your profile image, as the background image on your feed, with a mention in your bio line.)

• Provide a bio, url, and profile photo. Before you tweet your first tweet, take a moment to compose a good line to go in your bio, just to let people know who you are. It may not seem like much, but a single sentence can change you from an anonymous twitterer into an actual, live person worth connecting too. The profile photo is important too, as it helps establish your identity. Finally, don’t forget to add a link to your blog or Website.
• Don’t follow anybody until you’ve made a few tweets. When you follow somebody, they’ll get an email. They’ll probably then come and have a look at your feed to see who this new follower is. If there’s nothing there, they’ll go away and forget all about you. If you’ve posted a few interesting tweets, they’re more likely to follow you back, or at least take note.

(Keep reading …)