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A while back I mentioned the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, the land of the tiny and compact. Well, now the rage seems to be the Twitter novel. It’s probably not really possible to write an entire novel in 140 characters, even if they do happen to be information-packed Chinese characters, but it is certainly an interesting concept, and bully for the Japanese for trying! It is likely that most Twitter novelists serialize their novels.

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On November 30 Electric Literature (about which I posted earlier in the month) launched a bold experiment with author Rick Moody, using Twitter to publish his latest short story in “microserial” fashion. It was Moody’s idea to write a story expressly for Twitter, and the task of writing a narrative that could be transmitted 140 characters at a time turned out to be quite challenging. “I became obsessed with the idea of creating for that character clock,” he told The Brooklyn Ink.

The resulting story, “Some Contemporary Characters,” took Moody five months to write and was tweeted in 10-minute intervals over three days, for a total of 153 tweets.

The project ran into some unforeseen difficulty, however, as the story was being simultaneously tweeted from about 20 other sources (who were invited by Electric Literature to participate), including Vroman’s and other bookstores. Anyone who was following more than one of these Twitter feeds received an onslaught of identical tweets. Also problematic was the decision by many sources to inject the story installments into their regular ongoing twitter stream, so that the story was constantly being interrupted by extraneous tweets.

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I’ve been doing some reconnaissance reading about Twitter—why people use it and what they perceive its value to be. I am interested in what seems like an inherent paradox: Twitter is so widely and gleefully embraced as a tool for self-promotion (boost your audience, boost your sales, build your personal brand), and yet the prevailing wisdom on how to be an effective and popular Twitterer always seems to warn against being too . . . self-promotional.

The truth is, your followers want more than reminders about your upcoming public appearances and links to your glowing publicity (or merchandising tie-ins). In other words, they don’t just want to consume your product, they want to be connected to you. It seems they want what London-based blogger Leisa Reichelt calls Ambient Intimacy:

Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible [. . .] Twitter tells me when [the people I follow are] hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.

Who cares? Who wants this level of detail? Isn’t this all just annoying noise? There are certainly many people who think this, but they tend to be not so noisy themselves [. . .] There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in this ongoing noise. It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances.

Knowing these details creates intimacy [. . .] It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.

In keeping with this idea that the most appealing and satisfying Twitterers are those who offer their followers some form of genuine two-way engagement, plus thoughts, ideas, and content that are not directly related to the Twitterer’s personal gain, check out this Mashable mega list:

Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter

*As a side note, it’s great to see that two of the general fiction authors mentioned are not-so-distant graduates of the MFA program here in Missoula, Montana.

Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage (2008), The Confessions of Max Tivoli (2004), The Path of Minor Planets (2001), and How It Was for Me (2000):

Amanda Eyre Ward, author of  Love Stories in This Town (2009), Forgive Me (2007), How to Be Lost (2005), and Sleep Toward Heaven (2004):

 

 

If reading 140-word tweets all day is not enough for you, how about a book filled with the cream of the Twitter crop? Well, you’d be in luck, as HarperCollins recently published the book Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less. Editor/compiler Nick Douglas reportedly received a $50,000 advance for the collection. And those who originally penned the tweets that appear in the book? They receive a free copy.

Contributors have also been encouraged to promote the book and were sent an “online buzz kit” from the publisher, complete with graphical ads they can post on their blogs, Facebook pages, or basically anywhere online. HarperCollins has also called on contributors to tweet about the book and to “get your mom, grandma, cousins, favorite barista and high school band teacher to buy one.” In addition, the publisher is sponsoring a video contest to promote the book. The winner will win an iPod Touch.

So what do you think of this marketing campaign? Is it brilliant or presumptuous? The contributors don’t receive royalties, so they have nothing to gain by the book’s success except bragging rights. Are you planning to buy the book?

For more on the Twitter Wit promotion, see this article from Gawker.

Who maintains the most popular Twitter feed on earth? Guess again, it’s Ashton Kutcher.

The Iowa-born actor came to fame playing Michael Kelso on the FOX sitcom That 70s Show. In 2003 he created a minor media sensation by hooking up with Demi Moore, who had launched her career on the ABC soap General Hospital when Kutcher was only 4. Also in 2003 he became the creator, executive producer, and host of the MTV series, Punk’d, in which hidden cameras catch celebrities at the receiving end of practical jokes.

Now Kutcher, whose Twitter handle is @aplusk, is becoming a star in the tech sector, too. In April of this year (just as Oprah was sending out her first Tweet), Kutcher won a much-publicized race with CNN to become the the first Twitterer with 1 million followers.  For a recap of the whole “feud,” see Kutcher’s 4/17 victory appearance on Larry King Live:

 

Some criticized Kutcher’s achievement as a little more than a PR stunt and questioned the means by which he’d amassed a million followers. Still, Kutcher seemed earnest about the democratic power of microblogging, telling King,

“We now live in an age in media that a single voice can have as much power and relevance on the Web, that is, as an entire media network.”

Kutcher also emphasized to King that the brilliance of Twitter is that it is not only a “send out” but also a “take in” medium, through which he is having a direct conversation with his fans.

Now approaching the 3 million followers mark, Kutcher highlighted the potential of Twitter’s “take in” feature recently when he sent out a Tweet asking followers to suggest a joke for a scene in his upcoming movie, The Killers. The jokes flooded in, and apparently one of them fit the bill. As reported by Fishbowl LA, Kutcher’s making no promises that the joke will survive the movie’s final cut. (Also, it remained to be seen whether the contributing fan would receive credit, or payment, for the joke.) Still, the incident must have made The Killers’s screenwriter(s), and perhaps writers everywhere, a little uneasy.

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