Thread by @AlexandraErin

It's interesting to watch the divide between "Twitter isn't a good vehicle for selling books" and "How can that be? I buy books I see on Twitter all the time."

Both perspectives are correct. They're talking about different things.

I talk fairly often on here about the basic human inability to comprehend the scale of the world. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than when it comes to the world of literature, hence all the authors tweeting about relatives asking why they're not famous.

Or the question that used to be the bane of my existence: "What have you written that I would have read?" Which is based on the assumption that Literature is what fits in an airport bookstore, if not the spinny rack by the checkout.

(It used to be the bane of my existence, but now I answer it with "A tweet you saw screenshotted on Facebook." and I haven't been wrong yet.)

In actual fact, Literature is effectively an infinitely large landscape, relative to any human's supply of time, money, and attention. This is why Twitter is great for finding books you love but would never have heard of. There is a functionally neverending supply of them!

But for the same reason, Twitter is not a great place to sell books. Because your book is one of that neverending supply. Each time you sell *a* book to someone on here... I mean, congratulations, you made the magic connection to an audience member. =

But having done so... you get one sale. Maybe a fraction of a second one, through word of mouth. Even if that person follows you, they're not going to buy your book every day.

You can sell books on here. I've sold books on here. But it's more like hand-selling books at a convention than it is like operating a retail space, much less a distribution network connected to many retail spaces.

Now, I say this and I've run a successful book Kickstarter mostly on the strength of my Twitter following. And in another tab I'm setting up my next such one. So clearly Twitter has its uses for authors. Pre-orders, getting your fandom involved in publicity, etc.

So it's not that Twitter is useless for sales.

You just have to know what it is and what it isn't.