My most recent book will be published on April 26^th, making my forty-ninth book in total. Entitled [Twitter 英語術]—a rough translation of which is [English Language Techniques for Twitter]—it was co-authored with my good friend Yoichi Hareyama and will be published by Jitsugyo-no-Nihonsha (実業之日本社). As the title suggests, it is designed to help Japanese natives use Twitter as a tool for communicating in English, and it contains more than 500 sample tweets together with hints on how to gain followers and other interesting information; not least of which is a series of extremely encouraging columns written by a young lady whose English has improved dramatically through the use of Twitter.

The book crosses the border between being a non-fictional textbook and a fictional story. The central premise is that of a young Japanese man deciding to record every small event of an entire day for posterity. He starts at 05:00 a.m. one Saturday morning and tweets about every small thing that happens to him and around him until 05:00 a.m. the following morning. He tweets from his room, he tweets from the beach, he tweets from the train, he tweets from shops, he tweets from restaurants and he tweets from coffee bars.

These tweets are not just one-way tweets; he also interacts with some of his followers during the course of his tweet-a-thon. In fact, he becomes very friendly with one follower from the UK and a mini-romance begins to blossom with the rest of the world watching.

But that is not all…

In a twist that I personally believe will mark a first for the publishing industry, the pages between the covers of this book represent only a small portion of the actual book.

Confused?

Okay, let me explain… The book is three-dimensional in that it has a past, a present and a future. The present can be found within the covers of the book, but readers will need to cast their eyes further afield for the past and the future. To Twitter, in fact. The book contains five characters in total, all of whom are real people maintaining and regularly updating accounts on Twitter. Their past is already there for all to see, and their future will evolve before everyone’s eyes as time wears on. In other words, it is the world’s first reality book, combining a fusion of non-fiction, fiction, the Internet and reality.

And, there is more, although I will keep that a secret for the time being. In the meantime, just a small hint: Keep your eyes peeled on June 5th.

We will be revealing more information as the time draw near, so please feel free to follow me at the following address on Twitter for additional updates.

Christopher Belton: @beltonwriter

Tags: author, ブログ, ベルトン, クリストファー, blog, book, Christopher Belton, Twitter英語術, writer, Yoichi Hareyama

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 2:27 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.