Friday, January 03, 2014

The Historian


I'm thinking of starting a new Twitter account. I'll call it The Historian.This is my avatar:


The feed would look like this (click to enlarge):


Ultimately it would be a way to promote my book The History of the World in Tweets. But would anyone buy it? Maybe it's all just a pipe dream, my getting rich by selling a copy to everyone on Twitter.

9 comments:

Whirlochre said...

I say go for it. Better that you mess with history rather than some weirdo nerd.

Dave Fragments said...

Sounds twitteriffic. I'd give it as a Christmas book. Heaven's knows they'd like it better than the serious books I give or my writing. They hate me. Is this too many words.

150 said...

Pretty sure this was offered as a charity incentive, but it seems popular: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16138778-1776

Most existing history Twitter accounts focus on a specific person, or livetweet a specific era. I'm not sure I've seen one that's a catchall gonna-snark-about-something-random-from-the-past account.

As @TheHistorian is taken, you'll want a different, more specific handle.

And of course there's this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6904862-the-history-of-the-world-through-twitter

But if you just wanted a reason to put eight or ten history jokes together on an infographic, whatever, follow your dream. :)

Evil Editor said...

8 or 10? I have more than 500. I saw another book called History Tweets, but it has 130 pages, and "over 130 tweets." So apparently an average of about 1 per page. The first book you sent a link to had a place where you can click to get a copy. Except when you click, it takes you to other books. The other one you link to has practically the same title as mine, but I can find no "look inside" feature to see if it's funny or if it sucks. In any case, I can see I need a better hook if books of tweets are already available (I was going to say "already selling" but I've seen no evidence any have actually sold). In short, my book is funnier than their books, but you've convinced me not to publish it because there's another book you think might be better although you haven't read it.

What can I write the history of in tweets that I will be the first to do? (Actually, I'm pretty sure there's nothing you can write about that hasn't been written about.) Death? Most of my tweets are already about mass murder, so that would require less research than something like religion (which is mostly death) or Hollywood or Twitter. Suggestions?

Also, @thehistorian doesn't deserve a twitter account. (They've already shut down his blog.} But he got there first, fair and square, just like someone beat me to @EvilEditor (someone who tweeted once and then quit but has hung onto the handle for 6 years because he's too lazy to cancel the account), forcing me to be @THEevileditor.

CavalierdeNuit said...

Rather than just state a boring historical fact, you could tweet a current important event with something similar that happened in history on the same date. It would take more time and daily research, but I would read that over plain old history tweets. Like say today is the date the Titanic sank, and somewhere in the world today a big ship went down. Maybe weave in a little mythology? January is named after Janus etc. Everyone likes mythology. Your historian could also have a sexy woman in the background trying to distract him from his important work.

Evil Editor said...

Research? That sounds like a Twitter account for YOU to start.

CavalierdeNuit said...

Haha! EE, I forgot you were a walking encyclopedia and dictionary/thesaurus.

J.M. said...

oof. DO IT.

Jo-Ann S said...

Sounds like fun. I, for one, prefer history as a series of imteresting snippets rather than a dry tome.