[tsol]

While this is true, I think twitter still greatly increases his outreach. It's the only reason most of us are hearing about him. Otherwise, I would definitely not be reading his blog. While I'm sure he would have a dedicated audience, it's not twitter. Not only that, but the more people start personal blogs the less viewers the harder it is to compete for views. For Stephen King, a generational talent, it may not matter-- but there is a calculation to be made for a lot of celebrities. It's kind of like what happened to Netflix; if every celebrity tries to start their own personal blog fans aren't gonna go check all their favorite actors, musicians, writers, developers, socialites, and youtubers blogs'.

[tptacek]

Twitter is not greatly increasing Stephen King's reach.

[AOsborn]

Anecdotally this isn't true. The only time I have heard anything about Stephen King in the past few years has been in relation to a tweet he has made.

I think this is true for many significant accounts on the platform: I'm not going to read their blog or watch their Youtube video, but I'll probably see someone resharing a tweet they have made, whether on Reddit, HN, a news website etc.

Which is where I see the huge value in Twitter: a mainstream platform designed to present content in bite-sizes, appropriate for discussion or resharing. Twitter is a reach multiplier for many accounts for this reason.

[eozoon]

People who have not heard of King before Twitter and only hear of him from Twitter are not going to be the people buying his books.

So even if there were significant amount of people like you, he is not gaining anything from people seeing his Twitter. On the other hand, I have relatives who created Twitter accounts only to follow authors they like - the number of curated lists of notable literary figures is a testament to that fact.

I'm not saying Twitter is worthless to writers - readers talking about the books certainly helps sales, but that occurs regardless of whether the author themselves are on Twitter or not, and Twitter is certainly not the main platform people use to discuss books.

[parineum]

Stephen King just reached me for the first time in decades.

[tptacek]

Gross!

[tsol]

Outreach isn't reach. It's different for people to know you versus people actually following what you have to say every day.