Monday, March 30, 2009

A Novel Use of Twitter

“Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter.” - Newsweek

I read about another interesting marketing technique on thebookseller.com. Author R.N. Morris has begun the “Twitterisation” of his novel, A Gentle Axe. It’s an experiment where the author will be posting his crime novel in doses of 140 characters or less on Twitter “a few times a day.” His followers can receive the updates online or on their mobile phone. Read the entire article here.

He hopes to keep old fans happy and pick up new fans while waiting for the release of his next book, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, due out March 2010. The idea may work. The article was published on March 17 and stated he had around 200 followers. When I checked, the number was up to 378.

Intrigued, I am now following him on Twitter. I have some catching up to do as he’s been at this since mid-March. It’ll be an experiment for me to see if I can read a book in such small doses. I think I may be too impatient.

What do you think of this idea? Would you be willing to read a novel in this unique manner?

Thanks for stopping by.

Tags: Newsweek, Twitter, R.N. Morris,

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a NOVEL idea! (pun intended :)

I'll have to check that out - thanks for the tip!

Nancy J. Parra said...

I hope it is successful for him. But I do hope the trend toward free reads lessons or readers will think they shouldn't have to pay for a book-then we'd all starve.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

It was only a matter of time before someone tried this!

Don't think I would have the patience. Reminds me of how the Japanese are reading short novels on their cell phone.

L. Diane Wolfe
www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
www.spunkonastick.net
www.thecircleoffriends.net

Anonymous said...

Marvin, you stole the words right out of my mouth.
Not sure I'd have the patience to read a book that way. It robs the story of the flow the words create.

Joan De La Haye
http://joandelahaye.wordpress.com/

James Robert McCormick said...

I had posted my late wife's novel Cowboy on twitter over six months and 3500 tweets. She would have loved the idea of posting this way. In particular, the idea of writing a story at starts at the end. It can be seen at http://www.twitter.com/talkingcat I needed to show the forward reading version at http://www.pick2prod.com I believe that it was the first novel on twitter to be completely posted, started in May, 2008

Jane Kennedy Sutton said...

Thank you Marvin, Nancy, L. Diane and Joan for your comments. And, thank you James for letting me know about posting your late wife's novel. I'm so sorry for your loss. I have bookmarked the page and will read it as soon as I have the time.

Anonymous said...

I am constantly amazed at all the uses for Twitter. It is much more than the naysayers would have folks believe.

Jane's Ride - Novelist Jane Kennedy Sutton's journey through the ups and downs of the writing, publishing and marketing world