The Power of Social Media

Yesterday I received the first copies of my book in the mail.  It was so exciting!  Of course my first instinct these days is to use social media to share the news.  Within minutes, I had a photo up on my facebook page as well as on Twitter.  Well, another author I know here in Japan, Hugh Ashton, immediately responded and offered congratulations.  He also commented to me and to another author about how it’s exciting for me as a first timer, but maybe not to the other guy since he’s published so many books.  Well, this second author tweeted that every time is special, and then said hi to me, too.  I tweeted thanks, and hi back.  Within about a minute, he had re-tweeted my post about the book arriving – and tweeted the link to pre-ordering it on Amazon.jp.  Instantly I got “congratulations” tweets from ten people, and several of them also re-tweeted the author’s post about my book.

Think about it this way, if the author, Christopher Belton, has 12,000 + followers, then there is a potential for 12,000 + people to see his tweet and buy my book.  Maybe five of those people re-tweeted Mr. Belton’s tweet about the book to their 1000 + followers.  That is a lot of tweeting!  And I didn’t even mention the thousands of followers that Mr. Ashton, the initial tweeter, has.  It’s like a fungus – it keeps growing and growing and growing…

I have no idea if any of this will translate into book sales.  But right now it doesn’t matter.  I’m in awe of the power of social media and the way word spreads like wildfire.  Sincere thanks to Mr. Belton and of course, as always, to Mr. Ashton.  As a first time author, I’m just getting my feet wet and they are excellent models for immersion.