I can tell you my experience. Twitter doesn’t drive traffic to my Substack newsletter (97% is subscribers and the rest comes from Instagram and Facebook). It doesn’t drive that many direct book sales (i.e. I post a link and someone clicks to buy a book). Twitter lets people - readers, show producers, reporters - know there IS a book. It lets them congratulate me on the book and contact me via email if they are interested. It’s more of an aide memoire than anything else.
Agree with your thoughts completely. In response to the ship going down, I joined Mastodon. I've always been an early adapter when it comes to tech or social media so I'll probably join Hive as well. But your post got me thinking about why Twitter works for me and why it is my favorite of the social media methods. What it fulfill for me is community. As a newbie it is how I learned about agents and agencies. It is how I learned who the big publishers are. It is how I followed people and learned about pitch contests and postcard shares and most importantly, how I found friends on the same journey even though we are traveling in different boxcars.
The thing I will miss most about Twitter that I haven’t seen on the other platforms yet? Back and forth conversation. Newsletters are great for sharing your own journey but they feel so insular. (And for me? Blogging these days feels very narcissistic in general.) I’ve been on Linkedin for awhile but for my day job, and it’s great for the matter-of-fact “Hey this is what I am working on.” Mastodon has potential but so far I don’t see a lot of cross-pollination in discourse. Hive also seems great but seems so new… and it's only run by two people. Is that sustainable if everyone jumps on at once and there is no support structure to handle the traffic? Not sure...
But what resonated from this post the most? Your idea that we are writers and starting over is part of the job. Thank you for framing it like this; it was fun to muse about this morning.
I guess for me, Twitter hasn't been about converting into followers or subscribers, it's been about finding community with like-minded people who helped me to not feel so alone and challenged me to expand my perspectives. That's what I'm mourning. I've signed up for beta testing The Post, so we'll see if that does anything? Who knows. I'm just going to keep hoping that Twitter doesn't go away.
Kate, I adore your point of view here (and in other pieces you've written, too.) So much of publishing is just dumb luck after you've written a terrific book, like if somebody with lots of followers happens to love it and shares that in some public sphere. The best thing you can do is write, write, write and create the best work possible, then put yourself out there on Substack or in email newsletters, Instagram or even Facebook. You do have to start getting your name and work out there, so do it on sites where you enjoy going for other reasons, like reading what other people write. The best part about using social media is that it truly IS possible to find wonderful friends and colleagues this way, as well as useful information and perspectives, like what you always offer here. Thank you.
I got rid of my Twitter. Half the time it felt like I used it to fill the void of loneliness while writing. I've started posting daily on TikTok, something small twice a day, and I have a pretty active presence already.
The thing that I will miss about Twitter is that the crowd likes to write and read - and it is focused on writing, not so much images and videos. That felt unique - a crowd of people typing into a void, hoping that someone would read their words.
I've seen a few "what are writers going to do now that Twitter might be ending" articles recently, and my first thought is always ...
Uhh...write more?
Honestly, I don't get why writers use Twitter so much. It's a distraction and its influence is overstated (and I would hope that writers would already have their own site/blog/newsletter). I used Twitter (and Facebook) for years but finally quit in 2014. Here's why:
I never got the followers and professional acclaim some people garnered from Twitter. But I loved being in the entire world's chat room, and live tweeting reality TV, and laughing at memes before they're reposted to Instagram!
I’ve had a Twitter account for years and never found a use for it. In growing my newsletter, my following on Medium has been the key to building subscribers. But Medium is for writers and my newsletter is about the writing life, so putting a pitch at the end of my articles has drawn quite a few subs. This despite my Medium writing being about politics, climate, etc. and my newsletter being very different. For me if Twitter disappears, nothing will change. I’m also less focused on book deals because I see platforms like Medium and Substack as the new media for writers, particularly nonfiction writers. And, btw, they can be more profitable for the average writer than publishing.
Thank you Kate, really appreciate your thoughts, and the useful comments here. Agree it's helpful to accept the need to start over sometimes, and even an opportunity to re-imagine how I want to spend my time and energy in the most meaningful way going forward.
But meanwhile, hard relate to "I have trouble even imagining a post-Twitter world. I, too, am busy and tired and annoyed and waiting for someone to tell me where to go to have just the good things about Twitter again."
Like everyone else, in the absence of reliable data so I only have my own observations and experience to go on. I was told that if I wanted to get traditionally published someday I had to "build my platform" and be active on "writer Twitter." And I know many people have found it an invaluable source of friendship and connections, especially those distant or historically excluded from traditional networking circles.
But I sense that it's effect has actually been pernicious. It has simply set up new networks of in-crowds and cronies. I have a friend - a fantastic, very talented author - who has launched a successful career through her success in the late Pitch Wars. But those types of contests have simply created new sets of gatekeepers which exclude writers and works which don't conform to their own narrow tastes.
In some ways, the disappearance of Twitter might be a positive thing for authors, but more importantly for readers, who are not part of the "twitteratti." Readers whose tastes are not being catered to, not because there is not a market for books they'd like, but because, just as in politics, the minority of people (readers/voters/writers) who are on Twitter set the agenda and the tastes.
I can tell you my experience. Twitter doesn’t drive traffic to my Substack newsletter (97% is subscribers and the rest comes from Instagram and Facebook). It doesn’t drive that many direct book sales (i.e. I post a link and someone clicks to buy a book). Twitter lets people - readers, show producers, reporters - know there IS a book. It lets them congratulate me on the book and contact me via email if they are interested. It’s more of an aide memoire than anything else.
Agree with your thoughts completely. In response to the ship going down, I joined Mastodon. I've always been an early adapter when it comes to tech or social media so I'll probably join Hive as well. But your post got me thinking about why Twitter works for me and why it is my favorite of the social media methods. What it fulfill for me is community. As a newbie it is how I learned about agents and agencies. It is how I learned who the big publishers are. It is how I followed people and learned about pitch contests and postcard shares and most importantly, how I found friends on the same journey even though we are traveling in different boxcars.
The thing I will miss most about Twitter that I haven’t seen on the other platforms yet? Back and forth conversation. Newsletters are great for sharing your own journey but they feel so insular. (And for me? Blogging these days feels very narcissistic in general.) I’ve been on Linkedin for awhile but for my day job, and it’s great for the matter-of-fact “Hey this is what I am working on.” Mastodon has potential but so far I don’t see a lot of cross-pollination in discourse. Hive also seems great but seems so new… and it's only run by two people. Is that sustainable if everyone jumps on at once and there is no support structure to handle the traffic? Not sure...
But what resonated from this post the most? Your idea that we are writers and starting over is part of the job. Thank you for framing it like this; it was fun to muse about this morning.
I guess for me, Twitter hasn't been about converting into followers or subscribers, it's been about finding community with like-minded people who helped me to not feel so alone and challenged me to expand my perspectives. That's what I'm mourning. I've signed up for beta testing The Post, so we'll see if that does anything? Who knows. I'm just going to keep hoping that Twitter doesn't go away.
Kate, I adore your point of view here (and in other pieces you've written, too.) So much of publishing is just dumb luck after you've written a terrific book, like if somebody with lots of followers happens to love it and shares that in some public sphere. The best thing you can do is write, write, write and create the best work possible, then put yourself out there on Substack or in email newsletters, Instagram or even Facebook. You do have to start getting your name and work out there, so do it on sites where you enjoy going for other reasons, like reading what other people write. The best part about using social media is that it truly IS possible to find wonderful friends and colleagues this way, as well as useful information and perspectives, like what you always offer here. Thank you.
I got rid of my Twitter. Half the time it felt like I used it to fill the void of loneliness while writing. I've started posting daily on TikTok, something small twice a day, and I have a pretty active presence already.
The thing that I will miss about Twitter is that the crowd likes to write and read - and it is focused on writing, not so much images and videos. That felt unique - a crowd of people typing into a void, hoping that someone would read their words.
I've seen a few "what are writers going to do now that Twitter might be ending" articles recently, and my first thought is always ...
Uhh...write more?
Honestly, I don't get why writers use Twitter so much. It's a distraction and its influence is overstated (and I would hope that writers would already have their own site/blog/newsletter). I used Twitter (and Facebook) for years but finally quit in 2014. Here's why:
https://sassone.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/thoughts-on-social-media/
I never got the followers and professional acclaim some people garnered from Twitter. But I loved being in the entire world's chat room, and live tweeting reality TV, and laughing at memes before they're reposted to Instagram!
I’ve had a Twitter account for years and never found a use for it. In growing my newsletter, my following on Medium has been the key to building subscribers. But Medium is for writers and my newsletter is about the writing life, so putting a pitch at the end of my articles has drawn quite a few subs. This despite my Medium writing being about politics, climate, etc. and my newsletter being very different. For me if Twitter disappears, nothing will change. I’m also less focused on book deals because I see platforms like Medium and Substack as the new media for writers, particularly nonfiction writers. And, btw, they can be more profitable for the average writer than publishing.
Thank you Kate, really appreciate your thoughts, and the useful comments here. Agree it's helpful to accept the need to start over sometimes, and even an opportunity to re-imagine how I want to spend my time and energy in the most meaningful way going forward.
But meanwhile, hard relate to "I have trouble even imagining a post-Twitter world. I, too, am busy and tired and annoyed and waiting for someone to tell me where to go to have just the good things about Twitter again."
I so appreciate you stepping into these waters, Kate. Thank you. Super helpful to me right now.
Like everyone else, in the absence of reliable data so I only have my own observations and experience to go on. I was told that if I wanted to get traditionally published someday I had to "build my platform" and be active on "writer Twitter." And I know many people have found it an invaluable source of friendship and connections, especially those distant or historically excluded from traditional networking circles.
But I sense that it's effect has actually been pernicious. It has simply set up new networks of in-crowds and cronies. I have a friend - a fantastic, very talented author - who has launched a successful career through her success in the late Pitch Wars. But those types of contests have simply created new sets of gatekeepers which exclude writers and works which don't conform to their own narrow tastes.
In some ways, the disappearance of Twitter might be a positive thing for authors, but more importantly for readers, who are not part of the "twitteratti." Readers whose tastes are not being catered to, not because there is not a market for books they'd like, but because, just as in politics, the minority of people (readers/voters/writers) who are on Twitter set the agenda and the tastes.
👏👏👏 well said
I feel like all the social media is more or less a distraction. Always has been. The only requirement is reading books and writing consistently.