Wednesday 20 April 2011

No name, no hashtag

As some of you know already, I'm spending the summer working on a series of vampire stories. Hooray! Who says publishers aren't commissioning vampire stories any more? These vampires have their own USP, which I'm not going to tell you just now. The vampires will leak all over twitter, of course, and that's my current problem.

Talking about your work in progress on twitter is natural gossip with friends, but it also alerts readers to what's coming and in that capacity it's publicity. While I was writing Story of Physics, I did lots of tweets about fascinating physics facts and anecdotes I came across as I did the research. (Any of you who think 'fascinating physics fact' is a contradiction in terms need to read the book when it comes out in July.) That was easy enough as the book had a title and the title became the hashtag. The vampires, on the other hand, don't have a series name or any of the six titles yet. The publisher wants the titles in time to put in the catalogue late in the summer. I didn't realise I needed the series name, but I do - without a name, there's no hashtag and without a hashtag no one (including me) can keep track of what the vampires are up to in the twitterverse.

For the time being, they will go by the hashtag #thosevampires, which sets them up for the awkward transfer of name and hashtag later. But better a name-change than anonymity, and even vampires need to be on twitter.
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2 comments:

  1. #evenvampirestweet isn't a bad hashtag.

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  2. Indeed, it's rather a good hashtag! Wish I'd thought of that ... maybe I'll use that when #thosevampires come out.

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