"Tweeting" Stories?

[ucfgrad93]

I have a Twitter account. I use it to track sports news not to share what I'm doing. I would check this out just to see it, but I don't think I'd like it as a regular thing.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Now, had the author decided to tweet once or twice a day as their "character" and let the story unfold over weeks as part of your natural twitter feed, I might even follow them. Maybe that's an idea one of the MR authors could take advantage of and gain some free press over

now thats a cool idea. maybe post some cryptic photos or something too.

[JD Gumby]

Incredibly stupid idea. It would certainly be irritating enough to get me to unsubscribe to the magazine's feed, if I followed it - and possibly even to cancel any real-world subscription to The New Yorker I might have (and it's a good magazine - I probably WOULD subscribe to it IRL, if I could afford it).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by taustin

A stunt, nothing more.

Originally Posted by JoeD

A stunt and probably both a good and bad one.

With so many tweets (one per minute?!?!) you're going to be filling all of your followers feeds and washing away tweets by anyone else they're following. Unless someone is specifically following to read the story, I'd expect people might unfollow during the coming days of text.

Although from the pov of publicity, it's probably already a success as it'll get people talking about it.

Yep. I heard about this on NPR yesterday. I'd put Egan on my sh*t list for sure now. I read a story by her recently (but even it was a marketing ploy, cause it was an excerpt from Goon Squad) and liked it so actually purchased the Goon Squad and another of her books but this latest stunt had put her on my DNR list.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yep. I heard about this on NPR yesterday. I'd put Egan on my sh*t list for sure now. I read a story by her recently (but even it was a marketing ploy, cause it was an excerpt from Goon Squad) and liked it so actually purchased the Goon Squad and another of her books but this latest stunt had put her on my DNR list.

I wouldn't avoid/boycott an author just because of this kind of a PR stunt. Since it won't impact anyone not following her (although I would unfollow her until it was over if I were already following her, but that's just me )

Authors need to try new things to gain more readers and sell more books, so I doubt we can fault the attempt. I just question the execution.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by JoeD

I wouldn't avoid/boycott an author just because of this kind of a PR stunt. Since it won't impact anyone not following her (although I would unfollow her until it was over if I were already following her, but that's just me )

Authors need to try new things to gain more readers and sell more books, so I doubt we can fault the attempt. I just question the execution.

Well, it's my (clearly unfounded) belief that if writers want to sell more/gain more readers they need to write better not pull silly marketing stunts (like writing chapters of a novel as an Excel spreadsheet). But hey, that's just me

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Twitter is for checking up on what other people are doing and for what is going on in the world at that moment in time (i.e trending). It doesn't feel to me that it's a suitable mechanism for distributing a book, even a short story at that. As a one off stunt for PR, sure. but that doesn't make it any less of a stunt.

Isn't it always the way of business to take something useful to the average user and turn it into an opportunity to advertise?

Early on (in my history on the web), people had home pages. I remember spending a couple of days link-surfing, just to read all the interesting, goofy stuff people put out there. Then there was the internet boom and so much of the web is really just a huge catalog!

Then people starting keeping blogs. So of course, there are blogs for authors, products, companies, etc.

I've never warmed to Facebook, MySpace, etc., but everyone I knew who had an account talked about it in a way to me that sounded like "blog 2.0" - a more interactive way to talk about yourself and read about your friends' lives. Now, companies want me to "friend" them to get access to discounts, coupons, free reads....WTF?! I'm a "friend" of a company?!

So to hear that companies (authors, etc) are using Twitter to market themselves is no real surprise.

This particular thread topic doesn't interest me, but it's because I don't care for "serial" stories, no matter how they're "published", not because they're "misusing" Twitter.

[charlesatan]

Sure, it's PR stunt.

Do I mind? No.

Should every writer do it? No.

And it is on the The New Yorker's NYerFiction Twitter account, so it's an apt venue (as opposed to the author's Twitter account).