As mentioned in a previous post, we have been helping Philippa Gregory and her team with the launch of her latest novel on Twitter.

The first phase of the project has been the release of the c.250 tweets over the seven days leading up to the global publication date for the novel on August 18. At the time of writing this post, the final installment of tweets is due to be released from 5pm GMT this evening. The tweets have been published via the Twitter api using a specially written php/MYSQL broadcast system.

The project has attracted the best part of 600 followers who, based on their spontaneous reactions, have largely enjoyed the experience. Here, in the form of a status update picture essay, is a representative, warts-and-all sample of the @messages that have been sent to Elizabeth Woodville – the main protagonist in the book and the source of the White Queen tweets.

Elizabeth’s opening tweet…

Almost immediately fans comment on, and engage with, what is seen to be the “racy” nature of the tweets…

With roughly 33 tweets going out each day, the frequency of posting was not to everyone’s taste. Such a reaction was probably inevitable and, to be honest, we saw less of this kind of reaction than we had expected…

Some people clearly became actively engaged with the Twitter persona of Ms. Woodville…

Some started to question the point of the exercise – isn’t this giving away the plot?

But such responses were in the minority…

The dust has yet to settle on this project, and Phase 2 kicks off tomorrow (18th) with the addition of a bespoke Flash application to the Philippa Gregory site. This application will allow fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure in a more user-friendly environment than that provided by Twitter itself. We’ve learned a lot already from this project that will hopefully be applied to further experiments in the future.

Tags: application, flash, launch, linkedin, novel, PhilippaGregory, publishing, socialmedia, Twitter, WhiteQueen

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Marketing, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.