For those of you who are wondering, last week's laser eye surgery appears to have been a success. For a while, the affected eye didn't seem quite
right, like someone had smeared a thin coating of grease over my left lens. Not enough to keep me from seeing, but enough to cause me to clean my glasses every five minutes. Most of that has gone away, but I still have LOTS of tiny floaters in that eye (noticeable only when I stare at
the bright sky).
In spite of this, I went on vacation this week and not only did I have a good time, but I managed to make progress on my story. It's a rarity when those two
things happen simultaneously.
I recently set my phone to deliver more notifications when writing related tweets appear in my feed. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to notice a disturbing trend among
those people or sites that are announcing or marketing their books. Not that they're tweeting too much or because the same tweets keep appearing
again and again with annoying regularity, but because most of the notifications I receive don't tell me anything. These tweets are nothing more than a
picture of the book's cover followed by a link and a whole bunch of hashtags. Unfortunately, notifications don't show us the pictures--just the text--
so I'm usually left with a bunch of cryptic messages that do nothing to entice me to tap on them and go read the full tweet. And since the hailstorm of tweets will only grow with time, expect more and more people to depend upon notifications to keep them updated.
So for the love of all things bookish, at least put the damn title of your book in the tweet, okay?
Anyway, that's my rant for the week. Enjoy the links and have a great weekend.
ChemistKen
Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Newsletter Plan? Part Two
When Everyone Is Special, No One Is
How to Actually Use the Writing Advice You
Find on the Internet
Book Promotion is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Strategy
Authors, Can You Afford to Produce an Audiobook?
Layering 20 Scenes to Create a Strong Romance
Novel
The Writing Personalities As Crit Partners
Website of Ken Rahmoeller -- fantasy author, chemist, and lover of all things Hogwarts (Photo Courtesy of Scarluuk)
Glad the surgery worked!
ReplyDeleteTime to write while on vacation is priceless.
I don't use hashtags much, but my pinned Tweet is an image and the text just links to my book. Sorry...
Well, you're well enough known that everyone will know about your books anyway, so all is good. :)
DeleteI tend to use twitter to promote upcoming books, reviews, etc. I figure, it will come back tenfold. :-)
ReplyDeleteAnna from elements of emaginette
I think Twitter is important, I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that depending on a picture inside a tweet to do all the work isn't a good idea.
DeleteHuzzah for good recovery from eye surgery and a good vacation!!!
ReplyDeleteI think I include my title with my tweets, but I admit I am a multiple-tweet a day person. I actually doubled my sales (which are admittedly pretty few) when I doubled my tweets - which is sad on one hand because it encourages me to be obnoxious. It's tough finding the right balance.
Hey there's no problem with lots of tweeting. Just make sure that everyone knows what the tweets are about.
DeleteGlad you had a good recovery. I'm still learning about tweeting.
ReplyDeleteJuneta @ Writer's Gambit
Glad you're recovering! Great links this week!
ReplyDeleteGood news about the eye surgery and the vacation! Keep at that story.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear you're doing better. Thanks for the links and have a great week. :)
ReplyDelete