David Munch,
I don't have personal experience on publishing a series but current wisdom seems to advocate putting out a series and making the first book free. (I'm not really a fan of this but I think my reasons are beyond the scope of this discussion).
Steven Lyle Jordan,
To get 40 followers or more on Twitter I would suggest putting a link to your Twitter page in your autosignature here and there's a "Latest Tweet" widget for Wordpress.com that can be used for Wordpress bloggers.
Other quickest way to get 40 or more followers on twitter include the following:
1. Find an author that is doing unreasonably well in a short space of time (i.e. they haven't tweeted that much but have a lot of followers. For example an author who has tweeted 600 times and has 800 followers. Or you can just follow me because I've already done this
@DWallaceFleming).
2. Click on their "Followers" and add about 100 to 150 of their twitter followers that have the word "author" in their bio.
3. Make sure your Twitter bio includes the word "author"
4. Give until it hurts (Retweet and comment on about 4-10 struggling author's Twitter profiles a day for about 7 days.)
Yes, this will give you a bunch of author followers, but that is your base. You can use this base to gain credibility and reach the "avid readers".