Why Twitter is an awesome tool for writers

Are you interested in what editors at small press magazines are thinking about right now? You do?! Well, Twitter is a fantastic place to go to rub virtual elbows with folks that represent this community. In fact, every aspect of the publishing industry is fully represented on Twitter.

Let’s say you were looking for a list of the Best Literary Agents on Twitter. Media Bistro has put one together, along with lists of Best Editors too.

By “Following” these people and reading their tweets, you can discover links to others you might want to follow, or link to interesting blog posts with tips, advice, and a good read on what is happening right now.

But let’s say you don’t have enough time to find all of these people and link to each one of them – then what? You could look at subscribing to a Twitter List.

Lists are created by people who want to pull together a lot of Twitter accounts on a similar topic and publish it for others to use.  Listorious is one site for that purpose, but there are others too – just Google and go.

From my Twitter account I have a list I’ve named The Write Stuff.  I’ve put it together so I can read the tweets of over a 125+ accounts of writers, editors, agents, publishers, small press mags, etc.

If you follow my list – the work is already done for you. What’s more, you don’t have to “clog” your own Twitter-stream with all of those accounts, you look at what people are tweeting when you look at the list, when you feel like it.

Writers need to stay on top of what is happening in the world of small press magazines. Things are evolving so rapidly these days it is hard to keep up, but even spending 15 minutes on Twitter a few times a week will give you a chance to stay in touch by leveraging the knowledge of people you meet, lists you read and connections you make.