A guest post by @JanetNorCal
I’ve been thinking a lot about James Carville and his motto when he was helping Bill Clinton get elected (and I know this dates me): “It’s the economy, stupid”. Ultimately an author’s books trump any and all social media. You may love the author on Twitter, but DNF her books. You may hate the views she shares on her blog, but love her books. The bottom line is: “are her books worth reading?”
Obviously this is the merest scratch of the surface and it’s just my opinion. Many an online friend feels very differently. Without further ado, my thoughts today!
Do:
a) Share your opinions and expertise and let us know a bit of what’s behind the curtain.
b) Talk about the life of an author. I’ve read authors say I’m agonizing over which computer to buy or I’m tracking down the perfect pair of shoes before a book signing.
c) Be equally friendly to everyone, as much as you’re able. Try to exude an air of approachability.
d) Join the conversation whether it’s reality TV or a new movie or whatever is trending (just keep spoilers in mind).
e) Share your life in pictures sometimes: a great sunset, your new pet, super muffins … and make your twitter background personal and give us a glimpse into your world.
f) Have fun with twitter: make me forget you’re marketing.
g) Social media is rough and ready and no one’s grading your spelling and/or grammar. If your words are too slick, mannered or Haiku*esque, they won’t sound authentic.
Don’t:
a) Don’t constantly retweet your author (or blogger) friend’s request to get to 1,000 or 2,500 or whatever followers. So sick of those!
b) Retweeting retweeting starts to feel like spam when it’s all book and author related, again, especially if it’s your friends. If I wanted to follow them on twitter, I would.
c) WIP. Once in a while fine, all the live-long day, nope.
d) Reconsider being really really snarky and potty-mouthed. Occasionally, fine, but a steady diet of that impresses me not.
e) Don’t rip other authors a new one – this is a very subjective comment because who am I to say what anyone should say about their fellows. I can only say that even the appearance of piling on can be rather off-putting
f) When authors wear a number of different hats and share their expertise I wonder if I’m hearing from the former principal or the best seller or the hog farmer – for me it can be heavy-handed.
g) Probably no need to mention this but just in case: do not reveal plot spoilers when you have access to ARCs
If the metaphor of twitter and Facebook as the communal water cooler is a valid one, then perhaps the difference is that everything online is public rather than ephemeral. Even if one deletes a regrettable post, there’s often a record after the fact. The words of Henry Ford, quite possibly apocryphal, keep running through my head: “Never complain, never explain”. If you comment on a review that is unfortunate, if you enter into a very volatile discussion, if you talk about personal matters, you run the risk of having your words misconstrued or getting involved in a morass of back and forth that can be ultimately very unpleasant. Ultimately, it’s all a crap shoot.
Thanks Jessica, for letting me have the floor. Which is now open.
I feel like I should reply to @JanetNorCal…anyway, great post!
Hmm. The latest twitter don’t I’ve seen was an aspiring author who live-tweeted a book she wasn’t enjoying. That was all well and good – I fully support people’s rights to rip apart a book they think sucks – but she was including the author’s @ name in each tweet. Come on already, at least give the author a chance to opt-out of seeing her book snarked without having to ban your butt.
As a reader, I would like to note that overwhelming twitter banter is very annoying, especially when it’s full of inside-jokes. I had to stop following an author (whose books I really love) because there were SO many meaningless tweets everyday, it made me dizzy.
Another author kept updating her status with the same stat: “XYZ is writing.” It’s not an update when it’s the same stat, am I wrong? =)
There has been a lot of posts on the pros & cons of authors and social media networking. I like being able to ‘converse’ with authors but I do feel that there should be a distance. Daniel Day-Lewis once said (I *adore* him) that one of the reasons why he doesn’t like doing interviews or opening up his personal life is because once the audience sees him in his multi-colored striped socks the next time they see him on the screen all they can think about are those darn multi-colored striped socks! I agree.
I think I agree with all of these, Janet! Very well put.
I guess there are benefits to having many many followers, but I’m not enough of a twitter maven to know why. I like twitter because it allows me to talk to a community of people in real time. I don’t really care how many followers someone has.
And yeah, some people seem to retweet everything. OTOH, sometimes there’s gold amidst the dross, so it sort of evens out.
Excellent points Janet, although I don’t agree with all your do’s. I DON’T want to know about an author buying a computer or which tea they love, or the great pair of shoes that they found.
I don’t mind them talking about other authors’ books as long as it is positive. I don’t want them to post something negative because I think that they have a professional image to uphold.
And I don’t want them to tell me “run out and buy this book, it is wonderful”, and then find out it is her best friend’s book. I want honest, and as much as possible unbiased opinions.
I don’t follow twitter so I can’t really comment on the do and don’t do of it.
Think you for the thought provoking comments.
Thanks for all the feedback: isn’t it interesting that we don’t all agree *cough* … to be expected!
@victoriajanssen Thank you! If I had decided to add examples of “how to”, you certainly would have been on my list!
@Lorelie Brown What a terrific example you shared. The poor author whose book was being analyzed: what was she to do? Perhaps the tweeter thought she was being upfront but one approach I’ve seen is to announce, hey, the next 30 tweets are going to be about such and such, feel free to unfollow. I dunno. But certainly @signing that way. Shaking my head. P.S. Do you have a twitter button on your website? Blind me didn’t see it — altho I see @sonomalass lost her kindle cherry with your book: what a metaphor!
@Scorpio M … yeah, twitter banter: that’s such a personal thing … one woman’s banter is another … but I know exactly what you’re saying. I meant to mention volume too: when is it just too many tweets?
@sunita I unfollowed a new company because altho I knew it was stinking with gold, I couldn’t keep up w/the volume. A wise twitter guru told me to follow the person behind the company & when I figure out who she is, I might!
@leigh You’re a tough customer! What if the book is fabulous and the author is her best friend? You don’t like personal and I think steady nothing but books can get so one-note*ish. Susan Eliz Phillips seems to do very well just w/Facebook & Balogh has only an excellent website, an occasional guest blog & a yahoo group. There are certainly so many choices, both for us and for authors.
This blogger has an approach that I like: lowkey and “keeping it real” … with a bit of personal editing before hitting SEND or PUBLISH.
http://marianlibrarian.com/2010/08/17/how-to-be-a-completely-authentic-tweep-without-sending-people-screaming-in-the-opposite-direction/
I don’t tweet excessively, but when I do, I try my best to balance Retweeting, fun discussions, and my writing life. My rule of thumb for Twit-etiquette is similar to yours Janet, particularly the being open and inviting.
Thanks for this Janet. As you know, I agree with a lot of it. I have unfollowed people because their tweet streams are a constant barrage of sexual innuendo and links to nearly naked men, because they only tweet the beautifully executed, non discussion-inviting poetic tweet (gag me), because they tweet too much (even if the content is mostly very good, I get easily overwhelmed), because over time I have noticed they only ever respond to @replies that praise them, because they do nothing but complain, for example, about health problems, or because, in looking at my list of “friends”, I realize I haven’t interacted with them at all and still have no idea who the hell they are beyond their icon.
@Scorpio M.:
That is pretty funny.
@Lorelie Brown: Wow!
I’m an author and I have to say I’m utterly uninterested people tweeting about writing in any way, or anything to do with the process. I don’t need to know if you use a particular program, or wear a special hat, or where you are with the editing.
I have a low tolerance for twitter spammers, and hate people who tweet non-stop even when I like them as people. I also hate people who friend my account purely for promo purposes. They get blocked sooo fast.
“Don’t rip other authors a new one”
Agreed. Unless they’re doing something really mean or stupid or silly. There’s a lot of that around though.
This comment has nothing to do with twittering but I have to share – I was walking home last night (I live in Melbourne’s CBD) and had to side step my way through a group of twenty-somethings just as one of the guys pointed across the road to Rendezvous the romance bookshop here and proclaimed “that is the shop that only sells books with naked men on the cover”. My first thought was what an interesting tour of the CBD after dark he is leading; then I thought – we have moved beyond ‘bodice ripper’ as defining romance, and then I spoke up and said “yes and you just have to see them they’re great”, we all laughed and went our ways. Romance in popular culture…
@Merrian: oh, thank you for that Merrian!! Fantastic!
Great post Janet! I can understand that authors want to help their peers but the constant retweets do become annoying.
Fascinating post Miss @JanetNorCal. You are now my designated Twetiquette expert.
What do you think of ##FF, #WW and so forth?
Is one obligated to thank for ##FFs and RTs? Openly or privately?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Miranda Neville, ReadReactReview.com. ReadReactReview.com said: Read it:: It's The Book, Stupid!: Twitter Dos and Don'ts http://bit.ly/aQk9Iy [...]
@miranda neville … thank you! Everyone likes to be thought of as fascinating! I’m not sure I have much of an opinion on #__ and so forth. So what I would do, probably, would be slavishly copy anyone on Twitter who was #__ in a way I found helpful!
Great post, Janet! As a relatively new author who is sort of still working out what’s what with on twitter and everything else, and just what’s cool and not cool or just boring, this sort of insight really is helpful!
It’s interesting about retweets – sometimes when somebody tweets with an @me about something nice they’ve written on my book, or are doing, I RT it, you know, as a form of acknowledgment and support of a gesture that they have made, hard work they have done, that I’m obviously grateful for, but just the other day I found myself wondering if it appears to be too much of tooting my own horn to my own followers. Maybe it’s best to try and space RT items out.
In a way, it does sort of boil down to moderation, doesn’t it? That’s something I’m taking away from your article. Anyway, verra helpful!
@Miranda Neville: I try to thank for RTs but I think doing so is less common, as is #FF which I never participated in. I felt like I didn’t want to single out only some tweeps, yet I didn’t want to spend all day listing the 100 people I follow. It’s a form of favoritism I don’t like, but there is nothing wrong with it, IMO. Also, I never once got a follower from any damn #ffs, LOL.
I don’t mind the RT-ing and #ff-ing but I’m slightly annoyed by the “help me get 1 million followers!” I’d rather follow for a reason (interesting tweets) than to boost an arbitrary number. Excessive tweeting can be a bothersome too. Tweet and retreat, people.
I like the quote–never complain, never explain. Hmm.
I think I am the embodiment of “never complain, never explain”–out of laziness, not stoicism.
(Or do the two converge into the same thing at some point?)
I don’t quite get twitter. (My husband encouraged me to open an account and once I saw that I could use it to update my blog, I did so. And only a year later, when I was looking for an actual link to my twitter page, did I realize that there was such a thing as a @someone. o_O I still feel bad about it.)
It’s such a public forum. And most of the time I just don’t have anything to say to the public. I’m still using it mostly to post updates to my blog–another venue on which I have very little to say.