How Do You Promote a Book on Twitter?

Tip of the Day: Lots of tips, actually, on blog tours from agent and writer Marie Lambda.

I follow a lot of writers on Twitter, which means that at any given time I log in, I may see up to 10  books being promoted at once. Right now someone wants me to check out a review, there are two cover reveals, two giveaway contests, an offer for a free copy ... and I haven't even scanned down yet. If I was on Twitter a lot, I'd probably read promo tweets for about 25 different books a day.

Obviously I can't look at all of these books. So what catches my eye from the sheer volume of promotions?

Things Not To Do

1. Don't tweet random lines from the book. I mostly see people doing this for their friends instead of authors doing it themselves. I know, that sentence in your friend's novel was really powerful when you read it, but out of context, it means nothing. Some people will tweet ten or twelve of these in a row, qualifying as spammers. Seriously, don't tweet about something ten times in a row unless you're at the Super Bowl or something more immediate in real time.

2. Don't rely on price point. I see this a lot. My book is free today! But like many readers, I have this place near me called the public library where many books are free. I'm not going to download your book only because it's a freebie.

3. Don't beg. "No one will review me, what am I doing wrong? Please help!" You're probably not doing anything "wrong," and there are a lot of great books that don't get the attention they should. But if your novel sounds compelling to me, I'm more likely to read it than if you beg me to do you a favor, Stranger I Don't Know on the Internet. Plus what if I hate your book? How do I review it?

Things That Draw Me In

1. Snippets of reviews or fan mail. "I couldn't put this down." "My new favorite character." You don't need a ton of reviews, but if you get a good one, let me know. I love recommendations.

2. Promote novels you like with a personal touch. "Stayed up to 3 am to finish this, need coffee." "This novel about a cruise makes me want to go on a cruise."

3. I think giveaways still work. But there's a difference between a giveaway and giving a copy away for free on Amazon. Giveaways are often connected to special content and often writers team up to give away a few things together.

One thing I'm becoming more aware of is that I should make it more of a habit to leave reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble for books I love. Now that I have an e-reader, I read these reviews a lot. I think a book needs quality reviews rather than quantity, but correct me if I'm wrong.

What book promotions work for you?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

Tweet Your Favorite Author Day!!

Tip of the Day: There is still time to enter my contest for a signed hard cover of Just Your Average Princess. It's easy! Go to my blog to follow me and comment here to let me know.

I've been having a very good e-mail/facebook/twitter week. By this I mean I've been getting super nice notes from fans, parents, and librarians and it's awesome-- many smiles this week. And it made me think that we don't tell authors enough how much we like their work. Sure there are reviews posted on Amazon and Goodreads but outside of dedicated bloggers, a lot of people don't take the time to post a review after they've finished a book. I know I don't do it nearly enough. #Guilty

So, by the power invested in me by, well myself, I hereby declare today,

TWEET YOUR FAVORITE AUTHOR DAY!!

Let's spread some author love. All you have to do is go on twitter and send out a tweet to your favorite author(s), telling them that you love one of their books. Here's an example:

@megcabot, your Airhead series is amazing! Love it!

Need to find YA author's twitter names? Here's some great lists: Mitali's, Mashable, and Reader's Ink. Or just google search your author's name and twitter.

If you want to include a hashtag- #TYFAD.

Go forth and tweet!

Kristina, Miss Author in Action

Fun Friday: Twitter Stuff!

Here's some fun stuff I found about Twitter this week.

First, a long list of YA authors who tweet! Follow one or all! I'm not on the list (yet) but you can follow me at @TinaSpringer.

And if you are a YA author, you might want to follow @YAauthors. He (or she?) only follows YA authors and will retweet your important info like book tours, new releases etc.

Check out KidPub. They follow 100 twittering YA authors and post their updates.

And finally, if you're going to look at any link on this post, you HAVE to check out Read Write Tweet! They have an awesome list of:

YA Authors: 289
YA Characters: 14
YA Reviewers: 38
YA News: 21
Agents: 94
Info: 13

An interesting twitter story

Tip of the day: Don't forget #kidlitchat happens on twitter Tuesday evenings (9pm EST, 6 pm PST) and #yalitchat happens on twitter Wednesday evenings (same time).

So, every once in awhile, I put in one of my book titles in the little search box that sits in the right-hand column of twitter. Because, come on, it's fun to see what people are saying about my books in 140 characters or less. Every Friday, I try to remember to share one of my favorite tweets from the week, because some of them are just fun!

But then, a funny thing happened this past week when I searched on my title. Someone tweeted to someone with "Edit" as a part of their twitter name, and one of my book titles was in the tweet. Only problem was, the rest of the tweet wasn't in English. I put the tweet into the handy dandy google translator and determined that the language was Portuguese, and the person had been asking the editor if they might consider publishing my book in Brazil. I looked up the company the editor was with and it looked like a good one, with some well-known books published by them.

Here's the funny thing. The past few weeks, I've gotten a few e-mails from readers in Brazil, wanting to know if they could have a copy of my book to read and review, because they've heard such good things about it. Apparently, Brazilians can order it from Amazon, and some have, but it's expensive. I told one person I'd do it, just because she was VERY convincing and told me she'd try and get it some good exposure, so it could perhaps be published over there. (Yes, this was a different person than the one tweeting the editor).

Anyway, I'm not very shy when it comes to twitter for some reason. So I tweeted a reply to the girl as well as the editor and said, "Brazilian rights are available..." The editor immediately tweeted back to me and asked who she should get in touch with about acquiring the rights. I told her to contact me through my web site and I'd provide more specific information.

We e-mailed back a few times, and then the next day, she told me she was talking to the sub-agent in Spain and things were off to a good start.

I don't know yet how the story ends, but even if nothing comes of it, I still think it's a cool story. One that does show the power of twitter!!

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career