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This one ought to make you go, "Hmmmmmm..."
Author Mark Stewart will Tweet his entire novel.
Starting today, Bastille Day, I'm releasing my entire debut novel--The French Revolution--on Twitter. As far as I can tell, it's the first full-length literary novel ever released via tweets.
My immediate reaction, were I in your shoes, would be incredulity. Who reads long-form literature on Twitter? Who reads long-form anything online?
The short answer is: nobody. The internet is a universe of abundance, overwhelming us with creative videos and fascinating articles and a Pandora's Box of endlessly entertaining distractions. With this reality in mind, I don't expect people to read my whole novel online.
However, I do think you might actually read a few 140-character snippets of my novel, and--based on that sampling of Junot Diaz-style wordplay meets Jonathan Franzenish multilayered plotting--consider reading more, and even sinking some money into it.
Beat up Twitter all you want--the one truth they understand is that people will actually pay attention to very short messages. People read text messages, and they read tweets, because it only takes three seconds to check it out and move on. On the other hand, good luck getting someone to respond to lengthy emails, even if they're brilliant. Most people just don't have the time to dig through it.
Amid this information maelstrom, tweeting my novel provides the ultimate in easy sampling and information triage before purchase, the equivalent of watching a clip of a TV show before deciding to order the season on Netflix.
Twitter also gives me unmatched control and speed. I can tweet The French Revolution out as fast or as slow as I want (I'm starting off with bursts every minute for the first page, followed by tweets every 15 minutes--lemme know what you think), but even at just one tweet per day I'm moving faster than traditional publishers. I can get instant feedback from readers, and we can discuss the intricacies of the characters and plot twists as they develop. It's an ubercool way to grow a community and, ultimately, a market for my work.
That said, I didn't write The French Revolution in short, burstable, Twitterific sentences. I wrote this novel for lovers of literary fiction, with long and loving sentences, exploding with imaginative descriptions and inventive plot twists and characters I hope will stick with you for a while. Twitter is the delivery mechanism, not the defining structure. While I think my whiplash sentences will be compelling in 140-character bursts, it also may backfire.
I'm willing to take that chance. Publishing needs to change, and while I'm not going to revolutionize the industry on my own, I think I can help nudge it toward a more dynamic and customer-friendly future.
Besides, it's Bastille Day. What better time to try something zany?
Follow Matt Stewart on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjfstewart
If you think this would be impossible to follow in a regular stream of tweets, you’re right. That’s why Stewart has a website chronicling the whole story thus far (or, of course, you can simply click on his Twitter page to read it — though backwards). Stewart expects that will will take about 3,700 tweets to get the full story out there.
Others have taken this approach to put pieces of writing on Twitter, and plenty have even crowd-sourced the writing of works on the service. But Stewart believes his is the first full-length literary novel to be released first on Twitter. To commemorate the launch, you can also find his book for free on Scribd, or find it on Amazon’s Kindle for $1.99.
The obvious question is: Is the book any good? It’s too hard to tell at this point. We’re only about 80 updates into the 3,700. Regardless, this seems like a good idea for a guy who couldn’t get a book deal. Who knows, maybe he’ll even land a book deal now to write about his experience in publishing a book on Twitter.
It's all about exposure and marketing. Because he was first to do something on Twitter, his story is being picked up everywhere. (Not his novel, but the story of him posting his novel on Twitter. As they say, it is better to be first than to be better.)
John Scalzi wrote a good book and published it in episodic fashion on his blog and that jump-started his career as an SF novelist. This guy may end up with a career doing internet social media marketing. Either way, this stunt isn't about publishing his novel, it's about drawing attention to the novel he hasn't sold. It's a subtle thing, but might work. All I know for sure is that he likely doesn't seriously expect anyone to actually read all 3700 tweets that comprise his novel. He's doing this for the exposure. Kind of clever, once you think about it.
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