Our new segment for 2022 is for new authors/writers and written by published authors, titled – Writing Tips. These posts will be shared with you every Wednesday. Our latest post is from author Tom Williams on the subject ‘Twitter for Authors’. This post contains affiliate links.

Twitter for Authors

Disclaimer

My lawyer wife tells me I should always start with the disclaimer, so here it is.

This is not a guide to how to write the ideal Twitter post or how best to present your own “brand” on Twitter. If you want to know that, I suggest that you go onto Twitter and follow @BadRedheadMedia.

Why go on Twitter?

The sad truth is that you need to engage on social media if you are going to sell your book. (I have friends who really don’t want to believe that. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.)

But is Twitter a good way to sell books?

I don’t think it is directly. There are people I have followed whose feeds are basically a list of adverts for their book or other peoples’. Do you think I welcome their contributions? Or do you think I just unfollow them? What would you do?

I try to make sure that, unless I just have a new book out, no more than a quarter of my tweets are straightforward sales pitches. (As I write this I’m checking my page and there are more than 20 tweets until you get to one that is directly trying to sell one of my books – and even that is a link to a recent review.) Twitter does sell books (sort of) but I think it’s in an indirect way. You need people to know you write books, of course. That’s what pinned tweets are for (the tweet people will see at the top of your page). At the time of writing my pinned tweet looks like this:

I don’t really need to tell people I write the Burke books while that’s there (though some people would want to put in a buy link). What I am selling is my “brand”. I’m trying to suggest I’m an interesting sort of person who knows a bit about history so my historical fiction could be worth looking at.

Come for the marketing. Stay for so much more.

I used Twitter for pretty much what I’ve just written about for quite a while and then I gradually began to find individuals whose tweets seemed particularly fun and then I began to respond to them and soon I found myself making friends with other writers.

There are thousands (I guess) of writers on Twitter and one advantage is that it’s very democratic. You could find yourself talking to Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat), me (@TomCW99) or someone whose first novel is still an exciting gleam in their eye. If you don’t stumble across them by accident, you can search for hashtags like #writerscommunity. You’ll almost certainly find someone there you’ll get on with. Stick at it. As when you first arrived at a new school, don’t expect to make great friends overnight.

I know! Making friends 240 characters at a time. That’s ridiculous and superficial, right? Except that over time I’ve exchanged a lot of tweets with some of these guys. I’ve read their blogs. I’ve read their books. I’ve written reviews of their stuff and they’ve written reviews of mine. We’ve contributed to each other’s blogs and (shock!) I’ve even met a couple in real life. And during lockdown those virtual friends were a lifeline.

In summary …

The idea of this series, according to Whispering Stories, was to tell people things we wished we’d known when we started writing.
I sneered at Twitter. Then I started using it despite myself, begrudging every hour spent on it. Finally I came to love it.
Learn from my mistake. Give Twitter an honest go. You could surprise yourself.

Tom Williams used to write books for business. Now he writes novels set in the 19th century that are generally described as fiction but which are often more honest than the business books. (He writes contemporary fantasy as well, but that’s a dark part of his life, so you’ll have to explore that on your own – ideally with a friend and a protective amulet.)

His stories about James Burke (based on a real person) are exciting tales of high adventure and low cunning set around the Napoleonic Wars. The stories have given him the excuse to travel to Argentina, Egypt, and Spain and call it research.

Tom lives in London. His main interest is avoiding doing any honest work and this leaves him with time to ski, skate and dance tango, all of which (before covid) he thought he did quite well. In between he reads old books and spends far too much time looking at ancient weaponry.

A werewolf is on the loose in London.

Chief Inspector Pole, the vampire from the mysterious Section S, teams up once again with his human counterpart to hunt down the beast before the people of the city realise that they are threatened by creatures they have dismissed as myths.

Time is short as the werewolf kills ever more recklessly. Can Galbraith and Pole stop it before panic spreads through London?

Galbraith and Pole start their search in Pole’s extensive library of the arcane, accompanied by a couple of glasses of his excellent malt whisky. All too soon, though, they will have to take to the streets to hunt the monster by the light of the moon.

But the threat is even greater than they think, for in its human form the werewolf is terrifyingly close to the heart of government.

This is Tom Williams’ second tongue-in-cheek take on traditional creatures of darkness. Like the first Galbraith & Pole book, Something Wicked, this will appeal to fans of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London.

You never know when the forces of darkness may be released and there will be no time for reading then. Buy Eat the Poor before it’s too late.