Nicola Morgan Is Here!

I am absolutely thrilled to have the multi-talented Nicola Morgan here today to talk about 'Tweet Right', her new book which is aimed at helping everyone get to grips with Twitter and use it properly.

I asked Nicola some questions ...


For those who don’t ‘get’ Twitter, how would you convince them of its worth in one sentence?

It combines all the benefits of a mahoosive party in which you can talk to many people at once and avoid anyone you dislike, an office without the office bore, an encyclopedia written by people you trust, an up-to-date news source for the things that interest you, a bank of people who can help with any task, a job agency, a fantastic marketing tool and a way of making friends from all around the world – free.

What moved you to write a whole book about Twitter?

I guess it’s a case of “once a teacher, always a teacher”. I kept hearing people say they didn’t understand Twitter – some being hostile and others really wanting to start but not feeling they knew how to, or else people who had tried but found it bewildering or difficult. So I wrote a series of blog posts to help people and those posts were very popular. (I even had a publisher asking to use them to train staff and authors.) But later there was more I wanted to say and it’s also not easy reading a whole series of blog posts hidden in the depths of my blog. So, I wrote Tweet Right, which is much more comprehensive and much clearer. It covers everything you need to get into Twitter, right from the very beginning. It assumes no knowledge other than the ability to switch on a computer and connect to the internet.

What was behind the decision to publish it yourself as Crabbit Publishing?

Because I can! I’ve got a load of ideas for non-fiction that I don’t need a publisher for. They are all books which will work as ebooks only and they are also shorter than suits a standard printed book. (They’ll be around 20-25 thousand words. The next one is probably going to be Dear Agent – the Worried Writer’s Guide to Submissions.) Later, I will be commissioning books from other writers and soon I will publish my early novels as ebooks – Mondays are Red is first up. You will be hearing a lot more about Crabbit Publishing when we launch properly in 2012 – at which point I will be able to tell you the interesting secret behind it!

You’ve already changed the face of twitter forever with your trending topic #lessinteresting books. How did that come about?

You exaggerate! But this is what happened: on Twitter one day, I saw that someone had tweeted that they were reading Lord of the Flies. I momentarily misread that as Lord of the Files, and thought how much less interesting that would have been as a book. So I tweeted “Lord of the Files #lessinterestingbooks” and followed with another one – I can’t remember but perhaps, “Love in the Time of the Common Cold #lessinterestingbooks”. It went viral and within a couple of hours was trending at No 1 worldwide. Totally mad! But fun and interesting. I think my favourite was Love in the Time of Man-Flu. My husband’s was Mein Campsite. (Mainly because he came up with that idea.) Mind you, I did laugh at the ones which missed the point: “textbooks”, “I can’t think of any”, “No books are less interesting – they are all wonderful and u should not diss them.”

So, Twitter … more or less important for a writer than stocks of wine and chocolate and good shoes?

Yes.

You’ve subtitled the book ‘The Sensible Person’s Guide To Twitter’. What’s the least sensible thing people can do on Twitter?

Probably to tweet while drunk or angry. There should be an offence of being drunk in charge of a Twitter account.

What’s the main thing you hope people will get out of reading Tweet Right?

The knowledge they need in order to attain the lightbulb moment: “AH! So that’s what everyone’s going on about.” Also, to make new friends and learn more than they ever thought they didn’t know.


Exactly how crabbit are you?

You only dare ask that because you live hundreds of miles away…



Thanks very much to Nicola for sharing those thoughts with us.

You can find out more about Nicola on her blog, and for those who haven't met her, I can confirm that she is not crabbit at all, but is one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.


You can buy 'Tweet Right' here.

(It is currently in Kindle format, but you don't need a Kindle to read it as you can download free Kindle software from Amazon to your computer.)