For those who have not yet seen it, CNN issued a challenge to its readers/viewers to sum up the State of the Union in a tweet. The results can be seen here, but I was struck by how interesting this idea is for the kinds of books that we read and write. If a book cannot be summed up in a tweet, is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?
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Andrew Hartman
February 3, 2012
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A bad thing.
Is it so different from the sound-bite we all have to develop for our books? The hook that gets people interested? When I was following twitter, a lot of people used it to alert readers to a new, more involved blog post elsewhere. Or else, the kind of short observations we make in conversations all the time. Twitter is not in a vacuum. If it was the only form of communication we had available to us, then we could be worried, but actually I think it’s an exciting and dynamic tool to follow authors you enjoy reading and keeping abreast of new writings all in one place. Course, I’ve run out of time for following it, but I enjoyed it while I did.