I) Why bother with Hashtags
Twitter hashtags are potentially useful for accomplishing the following:
- Expanding your audience: Insert your tweets into existing conversations on topics
related to your book or of interest to prospective readers or the press.
- Promoting an upcoming event, such as a book launch or
reading, by creating a hashtag that other people can use.
What follows is a summation of advice from avowed experts and my own experiences
following that advice. This blog post is geared toward novelists and fiction writers -- online marketing is generally easier for non-fiction writers.
Note: This post assumes some basic knowledge of Twitter. Some previous posts, if you need a refresher
Disclaimer: In 2014 I made a big push on Twitter and as of
today, I have not been offered any Pulitzer prizes or Guggenheim fellowships,
but I'm giving in another shot on the advice of an agent I met with earlier in the month.
II) Things to Try
1) Find and use hashtags employed by authors of books similar to
yours.
My first book God Bless Cambodia and my novel in progress are love stories featuring romantic dysfunction, bathroom humor, and white guys behaving badly. (I know, I know -- I'm tone deaf, out of sync with 2021, etc)
Unfortunately, after checking out authors with similar work, I found no useful hashtags. One of my comp authors used hashtags mainly to promote his work (@jonathan tropper). Two other comp authors, Sam Lipsyte and Joshua Ferris don't use Twitter, and a third comp author, Philip Roth, is dead.
Verdict: Not useful for my work
Try Lit-Map if you need help finding comp authors for your work
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Lit-Map.com can help you find comparable (comp) authors
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2) Find hashtags related to themes or topics in your book
My books and one-man shows include neurotic, mildly offensive
humor so I searched for comedians, such as Larry David, Greg Gutfeld, and Chris
Rock – didn't find them use any useful hashtags.
God Bless Cambodia, my first novel, includes a lot of travel writing – the narrator takes a trip around the world and had a rotten time. I was
able to find plenty of hashtags related to travel but most were promoting
travel not saying it sucks.
Verdict: Not useful for my work
3) Find hashtags for your genre
Here's a list of hashtags for
different genres (scroll to the middle of the page)
Another place to find your genre: See how comp books are categorized on bookseller sites or at the local library.
My books don't fit neatly into a genre. God Bless Cambodia falls somewhere between commercial fiction and literary fiction and has been classified under "absurdist" and "comedy," on some bookseller sites and, at the public library, under "Man-woman relationships -- Fiction," "Voyages and travels -- Fiction," "Depression in men -- Fiction.
Verdict: Not useful for my work
4) Use hashtags used by the local press: arts reporters, book reviewers,
Even if your tweets don't result in immediate coverage, you might build some visibility and generate coverage at a future date because reporters will be familiar with your name. Remember the old axiom of advertising:
need to hit someone seven times before they'll notice you) What are local arts
media and authors using?
Verdict: this has promise
5) Create your own hashtag for a theme in your book or an upcoming event your hosting.
How to create your own hashtag: When creating a tweet, adding a “#” to the
beginning of an unbroken word or phrase creates a hashtag.
For my Twitter account @chronicsingle, I created a hashtag a
few years back called #chronicsingle.
Here's a hashtag I created and am going to try out. For songs, movies, books,
etc that were funny some years ago but will likely be offensive now, I created
the #wontflyin2021 by simply typing it into a tweet.
