If you haven’t read Justine Larbalestier’s blog post about social media self-promotion for writers, you should. Obviously, as a writer who has actually published novels and made money, she has much more cogent and useful things to say about the issue than I do.
But I would like to add my two cents as someone who is attempting to do writerly things, and more importantly, someone who uses Twitter.
At one point, I saw a submissions call and checked it out. The publisher that issued the call had a note on it that basically said if you did not have X number of followers on Twitter and X number of followers on Facebook, you were obviously not serious about this writing thing and they wanted nothing to do with you. I found that incredibly offensive for a multitude of reasons.
Obviously, I know that being serious about being a writer isn’t just about writing, as much as I wish it was. I’m not that naive. But this emphasis on social media, this requirement that you have to, by hook or by crook, have a minimum number of followers just pisses me off.
I use Twitter for fun.
I know some people acquire followers on Twitter by following people and hoping they get a follow back. That’s never been my style, mostly because I read my Twitter feed in its totality. I may have to start messing with lists sometime soon anyway for time management, but I still am not going to follow someone unless I am actually interested in what they have to say.
Let me lay this out as a generic Twitter user: people who do nothing but relentlessly self-promote are goddamn boring. The authors that I follow (Justine Larbelestier, John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Neil Gaiman, etc) are on my list because they’re interesting, not because I want to be updated daily on what they’re selling. I like the heads up on new things coming, but they have a hell of a lot more to say than just “buy my book.”
I have unfollowed people before because they rarely Tweeted anything that wasn’t about their products. I’ve also unfollowed people because they were boring. What this tells me, as someone who now might want to approach this from the other side, is that maybe being on Twitter just so you can tell everyone to buy your shit is not going to work that well.
I don’t like That Guy, you know, the one that only wants to talk to you so he can try to sell you something and tell you how awesome he is. I’d hazard that no one does. I refuse to be That Guy. You can’t make me.