One of your greatest tools in creating excitement for, and interest in, your book is the content from the book itself.

Although not every sentence of your book is perfected crafted as a tweet, you likely have many sentences, ideas, concepts, and questions within your book that can be easily distilled into 140 character tweets. If you mine the copy that didn’t make it past your editors, you may have even more content to use on Twitter.

I highly recommend that you invest the time in creating a list of tweets from your book, or hire someone to do it on your behalf.

How many tweets can you find in your book? I recently finished my reading/review of Leadership and the Art of Struggle by Steven Snyder, and from his 180 page book, I pulled about 100 tweets. I’ve gleaned nearly twice that many from other books.

What makes a good tweet? One of the challenges in pulling tweets from a book is getting the length right. The ideal length of a tweet is around 100 characters. If a tweet is much longer than that, it is difficult for people to retweet. Also, shorter is better since shorter tweets leave room for people to add their thoughts and comments. Since I recommend adding a hashtag (something related to your book title), the actual content of the tweet can only be about 85-90 characters, which requires some deft editing, at times. Here’s an example of a tweet that’s a good length (104 characters):

The choices you make — large and small —are the most vivid expression of your leadership. #artofstruggle (Tweet Now!)

And here’s an example of a tweet that’s an even more effective length (67 characters.):

You cannot heal a situation until you heal yourself. #artofstruggle (Tweet Now!)

Should my tweets include a link to the sales page for my book? As a rule, I say no, with one exception. First, the rule: By tweeting from your book without any links (pure content), you are adding value, pure and simple. When you add a link, you are selling. What’s interesting is that sharing pure content from your book will have the end result of sales, if your content is compelling, interesting, and helpful to the people reading your tweets. Here’s the exception: your book launch week. During your book launch week, I highly recommend that you add a sales link to every tweet. People expect you to sell during your launch week — so sell!

How often should I tweet content from my book? I recommend that you send pure content — whether from your book or from other writings —several times each day to help establish your brand and create memorability. You want people to easily identify you as a subject matter expert in the area of your book topic. You can repeat tweets, since you are likely adding new followers daily who have never read your content, but be careful to keep writing and adding new tweets to your rotation to keep your Twitter stream fresh.

What’s better than sending out your own content? Having others send out your content is an even more powerful way to create excitement for your book. Without fail, when I tweet content from our authors, it results in people asking questions or commenting on the book.

If you published a book years ago, published a book yesterday, or are looking forward to a launch later this year, I encourage you to try this tip. For even more ideas about creating a successful book launch, I encourage you to download my free e-book, Your Book Deserves a Celebration. 

Becky Robinson

I am the founder/CEO of the Weaving Influence team, the author of Reach: Creating the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause, and the host of the Book Marketing Action Podcast. I’m a wife and mom of three kids, and I enjoy running, reading, writing, coffee, and dark chocolate.