Busiest Days of the Week for Books on Twitter

Ever wondered why some days your Twitter feed is awash with book mentions and other days it’s empty? So did we!

Luckily, we keep note of book tweets as part of our core recommendation engine. And, on closer inspection, we’ve found the busiest and quietest days in the literary Twitter world:

• Mondays and Tuesdays are typically the busiest days for book tweets with nearly a quarter of a million tweets. That’s ~35% more than the calmest day for book tweets – Saturday.

• And while Friday and Saturday have very regular numbers of book tweets, Monday and Tuesday vary considerably week to week!

What could be behind these numbers? It turns out it’s all down to marketing…

Large book releases normally take place on Tuesdays and are accompanied by a flood of social media activity. These tweets (and RTs) from publishers, agents, authors drive people to comment on the book and indicate that they want to buy or want to read the title. The surge that we see on Mondays and Tuesdays gradually dies away as the week progresses and marketing activity slows down.

This also explains why the number of tweets at the start of the week varies dramatically – it’ll be highest for weeks with plenty of large book launches and lower for weeks where smaller launches and lower marketing budgets are in play.

Friday and Saturday are super-consistent in terms of tweets because these come predominantly from real people (as opposed to organisations) who are talking about the books they are reading over the weekend.

At BookVibe, we know that the promotional tweets that dominate Monday and Tuesday are often less interesting for you to read. We’ve been improving our filtering techniques so that you see more relevant tweets from individuals you care about. Take a look at your bookstream and let us know how we’re doing!