Yes, I’ve submitted dozens of query letters to agents. It’s amusing to me how some will be courteous
enough to send you a rejection letter while others won’t even acknowledge you
sent them your work. I know that if I
ever became a literary agent, I would at least respect the people who took the
time to send submissions to me. But the
literary world is also changing, and ebooks are all the rage now. You don’t need an agent to publish
your book today with tools like Amazon KDP and Smashwords. Promoting your book, on the other
hand, is a different beast altogether.
Obviously I’m not an expert on promoting books. Otherwise I’d be popping up on best seller’s
lists. But I have humbly amassed a
moderately-sized Twitter following just by being a writer and following other
writers. It hasn’t been too terribly difficult
to do, either. For a while when I
started I would add followers and then delete those who didn’t follow
back. And I would interact with those
people who followed me by conversing and retweeting. I did this for
several months—long enough to get past the pesky 2000 following threshold, and
now I have well over 6000 followers. I
don’t really follow people first now either.
Every day I’ll get ten to fifteen followers, and I’ll choose the real
people (not bots and spammers), interact with them, and follow them back. And it seems to work well.
Why is this important?
Well, when I would tweet a promotion for one of my books or a blog post prior to amassing the followers I have now, I would receive maybe 10 hits. Now when I do it, I get
between 50 and 100. Bumping up your
number of Twitter followers has its advantages, and so for anyone just starting
out, I’d suggest you invest some time in Twitter.
After all, all of these SEO and book marketing people do the
same thing. They follow people in
droves, then unfollow those who haven’t followed back, then try to get money
from you to promote your work to all the followers they’ve amassed. Why pay money to those people when you can
just do that yourself?
One mistake I see people make all the time is that they’ll
hit that 2000 following limit, then go in and indiscriminately unfollow a bunch
of people so that they are only following a few hundred. This is absolutely one of the worst Twitter
moves you can do if you want to amass a ton of followers. First of all, for those who do follow you, it’s
annoying. I took the time and effort (really just a second and a click--why am I complaining?) to follow you,
so when you stop following me, that means to me that you aren’t interested in
what I have to say. I waste no time whatsoever
unfollowing those who aren’t following me back.
A few times a week I’ll use one utility or another (Who Unfollowed Me,
Twitter Karma when it works) to list the people that aren’t following me back,
and I’ll unfollow those people. I’m
always amazed, too, at how many people show up in this list. Smart Twitter users who actively manage their
followings aren’t going to fall for it.
And the second issue with indiscriminately mass unfollowing is that if
you attempt to follow more people after you’ve already unfollowed most of your
followers, chances are you’ll just be following the same people again—people who
are already following you in the first place.
I’ve seen at least a dozen instances of someone following me, me
following back, that person then unfollowing me, me unfollowing back, and then that
person following again. Had I not
unfollowed them like a smart Tweeter, they would all be wasting their time
following me back a second time. Sure,
you may be able to get past that 2000 following limit by doing this, but as people
start to unfollow you back, your numbers are going to dive. Not the way to do it, folks. Twitter isn't all about you.
If you are following 2000 people and only have 1000 followers,
you need to unfollow a lot of folks.
There was a time when I would follow celebs, but that became tedious and
boring. Celebrities just don’t interest
me—they are just people like you and me—people with big paychecks and cameras
shoved into their faces, but who often have nothing more to offer than a
hundred other people you may follow. And
celebs aren’t going to follow you back.
They aren’t going to converse with you.
Why bother? Subscribe to their Facebook pages or an RSS
celeb feed instead, because chances are if some celeb tweeted something
interesting or shocking, you’ll read all about it there.
Keep your following/followers numbers roughly the same, and you’ll have no
problem bypassing that 2000 following limit.
Oh, and take advantage of the bots and fake people who follow you. Many people will report those accounts as
spam, but I don’t. I just don’t follow
those accounts back—allowing them to pad my number of followers until they are
eventually deleted. I think Twitter allows
you to follow only 10% more people than are following you after you reach 2000,
so as long as you have over 1800 followers, you can keep on following. Just make sure you always unfollow those who
aren’t following you back.
It takes time. I’ve
been working at it for several years now.
Every day it grows a little bigger, and every day the hits to my blog
and book sites go up a bit more. Just
keep at it. Keep following back,
unfollowing those who aren’t following you back, and tweeting, retweeting, and
conversing with others. The more you do,
the more success you’ll see.
Oh, and don’t forget to keep writing! For a while there I think I spent more time each
evening on Twitter than I did actually writing.
Managing your Twitter followers should only take ten or fifteen minutes
per day at the most.
Hope that helps!
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