Now Users Can Download Your Book Directly From a Tweet to Kindle for iOS

This easy little trick should be helpful for every writer who is using Twitter to promote his books. With a recent update of Kindle for iOS (v. 2.5) iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users can import their own books to the application (here I’ve described how to do it).

Wouldn’t you like tweeple to read your book seconds after they discover it on Twitter? You can use this method to link to a free edition of your how-to guide or a free chapter of your new novel or one of your recent short stories. Make sure you have active links to where you want your reader to continue.

Here is a trick.

Instead of tweeting a link to a book page, tweet a link to a book file.

So if your book is being displayed at the directory like this: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3127

1. choose a link to a prc/mobi file: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3127.mobi

2. and tweet it – you can use an url shortener, it also works: http://bit.ly/h35E1O

The link has to be opened in Safari, a screen appears like the one below and a second after you’re on Kindle for iOS.

When you tweet a link, it’s good to address iOS users as well as a book application. It could look like this:

.bbpBox28137093783879680 {background: #ffffff;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

Yesterday I’ve tweeted my Feedbooks book file and there were almost twice as many downloads as usual.

Trick works also for .ePub files (Stanza, Kobo, Bluefire Reader) and .pdf (iBooks, Stanza, Kobo, Bluefire Reader).

You can call me a mobile freak, before I wrote similar posts a couple of times – for ePubs (like this one). With half of Twitter users tweeting from their mobile phones it’s just very reasonable to find and use the quickest possible way to make your book land in an e-reading application of their choice.

Being read in the book application is not the same as being read on the web. Web is come-and-go. Since you land in Kindle or Kobo you’re there every time the reader wants to read a book. You become a serious choice.