Do you follow Jennifer Weiner on Twitter? I do, not because I love her books, but because her content is a perfect blend of witty and informative. She’ll live tweet The Bachelor hilariously and then an hour later will throw out tips to young authors looking to meet with an agent. Interspersed with her interactions – and it truly is interactive, she is great at reading her @ replies and engaging in back and forth with the community – she’ll pimp out her new book or new show or whatever project she has coming up.
I love it because it is SO SMART. She is so good at engaging her followers with personal interaction, interesting and funny content that when her latest book came out, instead of putting it on hold at the library like I usually would, I saw her tweet about how pre-orders impact an author’s standing with a publisher, and I went ahead and pre-ordered her book.
I don’t particularly love her books. They’re like a re-run of Everybody Loves Raymond: I’ll sit through it if I’m stuck on a plane but will promptly forget about it later. But I bought and still own her last book because the author had become part of my twitter stream and I enjoyed getting her daily updates.
Contrast with Kristin Cashore, an author I absolutely adore beyond reason. She states up front in her twitter bio that she doesn’t read @ replies, she just uses twitter to auto stream new blog posts. Uuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhh. What good is that? I already have her blog in my Reader, I know when it is updated. This is an author I adore; I’d love to own all her books. If she let me know about a pre-order, I’d be clicking to Amazon before I even finished reading the 140 characters. As it is, for her, I’m reminded of new releases based on whenever library holds pop up. Sure, I read her book, but … for free. She currently has 1800 twitter followers; can you imagine what would happen if she actually began to engage with them? I have no data on this, but I could only imagine it would help boost sales, increase attendance at book signings, and help her become a more known quantity, which, as I understand it, is exactly what you need to continue to get paid to write books.
Anyway, because she clearly won’t do it herself, let me do it for her: you guys should all go read Cashore’s Graceling trilogy, it’s fantastic.
InnerTeub 
You should tweet this advice to her. Oh wait, never mind.
This is really interesting. I am not a huge Weiner fan (haaaa), but I think it’s awesome that she interacts on twitter. That makes me feel greater affinity for her books, and I imagine that would only increase if I were to follow/interact with her. I LOVE the Graceling trilogy, on the other hand, and would go total fan girl if Cashore talked to me. Bummer that she doesn’t do twitter right.