The Right Way for an Author to use Twitter

In case you didn’t hear about it, Multiverse favourite David Mitchell showed writers on Twitter a great way to use the platform. Last month he tweeted his latest short story, The Right Sort, in 280 tweets over the course of a week. The Guardian has helpfully put them in chronological order and you can read the full story here.

The story is about a young boy, Nathan, and his mother and a Valium fuelled afternoon. Mitchell uses the 140 character limit to great effect, as seen here: ‘The pill’s just kicking in now. Valium breaks down the world into bite-sized sentences. Like this one.’

Many writers think that being on Twitter doesn’t sell books and therefore it’s not worth engaging with, but I disagree. Too often writers use Twitter solely as a means to self-promote, perhaps not realising that what social media users want is content, not forty-five posts about their latest book.

Mitchell’s new book The Bone Clocks is published on 2nd September and of course, this Twitter story is a great way of drawing attention to his work in time for the publication, but it’s also a valid exercise in itself and a brilliant idea.