Celebrating 1000 Twitter Followers

This is literally the only “1000” image I could find for free. Why Squarespace? Just why?

Reflecting on the last few years of my writing journey and using Twitter as a platform.

The time has finally come. The Great and Terrible day of Alan K. Dell is upon us. One thousand humans (presumably) have pledged their allegiance - nay, their very souls - to me, in support of my evil schemes. Muhuahahahaaaa!

Lol it’s not all that dramatic.

But I am so incredibly grateful to all those who have hit that follow button on Twitter to see more of my nonsense on their timelines. I can’t quite believe it: 1000 followers. It does feel like a bit of a milestone, especially since it has brought so many meaningful interactions over the last couple of years. I wanted to take a minute to reflect on some of the things I’ve experienced using Twitter as my main social media platform. I try not to pay too much attention normally to my follower count, because I do prefer genuine interactions. But y’know, a thousand is still worth acknowledging.

I first signed up to Twitter back in June 2014 - so, over seven years ago - and I had only been convinced to join because it seemed to be a place to get up-to-the-minute travel news, particularly for local commuting. Back then I was going into London a lot and I wanted to also be able to support my wife who works in the City. So I followed accounts like Transport for London and BBC News, the C2C Rail Service etc… It was a little while after that, I realised I could also follow musicians or preachers and other church-based accounts and get news on new releases or daily prayer stuff. That was pretty cool for a while, but I didn’t really use it much. I had like 40 followers at the most and I didn’t post at all - just retweeting into the void. Gradually I added on some funny accounts and scrolled Twitter for other interests like photography and art. It stayed pretty much in that place for quite a few years.

About four years ago I realised I could share videogame clips to Twitter, and that was really a gamechanger. I was playing the Soulsborne games at the time and I wanted to share my epic boss fights with my group of gamer friends, so I just used it as a share platform for a while. That moved onto other games like Super Mario Odyssey and (more recently) Animal Crossing.

But it was in 2019 that I started to properly focus my attention on Twitter. I started writing in September of that year and, through researching on other wonderful writing blogs, became aware of the need for an online presence. So I started following writers, posting updates about my writing and rebranding my account as one all about my writing journey. I met some absolutely fantastic people and my follower count began to grow. I remember being so excited when I hit 75 followers, and then 100 soon after. Then in August 2020 I set up this website and blog after having gotten to the end of my first draft for From the Grave of the Gods and sent it off to beta readers.

The last 18 months has been honestly an amazing period in my life that has really given me the inner fortitude to push through the shitty backdrop we’re all now living with. The encouragement of my friends and family with my writing has been awesome, but so has the Twitter Writing Community - a wonderful community of travelers along the same path, helping and encouraging, motivating, commiserating and sharing with each other. We’re all in different places on our journeys and our experiences are our own, but none of us are truly alone. Being able to support other writers is a great feeling. It’s something my introverted brain hasn’t allowed me to jump feet first into as I would have liked (even online I tend to be pretty shy these days), but I’m gradually learning how I can help others along the journey too: whether that be through simple likes and retweets for signal boosting, buying and reviewing indie books, offering words of solidarity or even just through sharing my own experiences.

From the bottom of my heart I want to thank each and every one of you who has followed me thus far. I genuinely appreciate you all.

So why a blog post rather than something like, say, a book giveaway?

There’s a couple of good reasons for that… Firstly, I’m not very prepared, so I’ve written this post out right at the last minute. Secondly, I would love to have done like a sale or a free book promotion or even a giveaway, but logistically it hasn’t worked this time around. Being perfectly transparent with you all, I ran a giveaway a couple of months back for print copies of From the Grave of the Gods, and while that was really cool, it hit my wallet hard. I resolved personally that the next time I did a giveaway, I would do it for the ebook, because then I wouldn’t have to pay for printing and shipping. And so I looked it up on Amazon, because I’m signed up to KDP Select which allows me to put books up on 99p/99c sales or free promotions… and I can’t. Turns out because I did that 99p/99c sale back at Christmas, I’m tapped out for promotions through Amazon until possibly February? Basically I have to wait until the 90-day enrollment period for Kindle Unlimited renews. So what about a giveaway on Twitter? Can’t do that either, because it would be breaking Kindle Unlimited’s exclusivity terms. I could run a free ebook giveaway for The Re-Emergence, but, I mean… It’s already free. You can download it by signing up to my Newsletter. Wouldn’t be much of a giveaway if I were to do it for something that’s already available freely.

What I’ll probably do is revisit this giveaway/price promotion stuff in a couple of months when I’m sure I’m clear of Amazon’s barriers. A belated celebration, if you will.

If you have stumbled across this blog post because of the Twitter algorithm and you’re not already following, why not take the plunge? Follow me @alandell88 I do make a point to follow back other writers as much as I can, and I don’t clutter up the timeline very much. I’m still a profuse retweeter, and I am most interested in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, so if you’re an SFF writer, I’ll more than likely be all over your tweets.

Thank you all for the first thousand. Onward to the next!