After posting significant gains in 2011, the 16 publishers highlighted in PW’s annual Twitter snapshot all continued growing in 2012, showing that the book activity on the social media platform is still increasing substantially. All told, the total number of Twitter followers across all 16 publisher accounts increased 101%, to 755,142 followers combined. Between 2009 and 2012, the publishers tracked by PW have added 717,018 followers.

Of the 16 publisher accounts tracked by PW, three houses doubled their followers in the past year (Free Press, Vintage, and Grove) and all had healthy increases. Little, Brown added the most followers in the year, 81,696, pushing its total to 213,973; when PW first polled publishers about their Twitter followers in 2009, LB had only 5,999 followers.

At Tor, publicity manager Alexis Saarela credited the publishers’ monthly Twitter Chat, which brings together three authors to directly interact with each other and fans, as well as their authors’ dedication to tweeting on their own personal accounts for the 67% increase in the number of Twitter followers in the past year.

Another Twitter account that saw a great increase was Free Press, nearly doubling in the past year. One of the smallest Twitter presences back in 2009, Free Press now has over 13,000 followers. Claire Kelley, Free Press’s marketing manager (and manager of the Twitter account), said that the publisher has adopted a “tweeting style”—“books are in capital letters and we link to Twitter handles for anyone we mention. When tweeting at an event, we always use hashtags,” she said. “I like to search for the title of a book on Twitter, and retweet everyone who is talking about the book. I find this helps to increase our followers.”

Twitter Followers*

Imprint 2009 2010 2011 2012
@AAKnopf 1,581 24,225 96,443 160,134
@GrandCentralPub 3,726 6,450 12,161 19,918
@Littlebrown 5,999 38,534 132,277 213,973
@ThomasNelson 678 5,101 10,889 15,973
@freepressbooks 516 2,030 6,734 13,310
@HarlequinBooks 2,187 6,075 12,318 18,566
@AtriaBooks 1,809 2,822 5,904 10,758
@Tin_House 892 3,074 8,138 14,609
@doubledaypub 1,057 3,184 9,055 17,861
@groveatlantic 268 1,087 4,736 9,611
@HarperPerennial 805 3,239 11,306 19,539
@OReillyMedia 7,340 15,951 29,426 45,838
@vintagebooks 783 6,276 11,378 23,974
@chelseagreen 5,003 13,102 16,379 19,015
@WorkmanPub 1,485 3,494 8,312 11,661
@torbooks 3,995 8,632 84,038 140,402
Total 38,124 143,276 376,296 755,142

*As of June 14, 2012

Note: This is only a small sample of publishers. PW will run a more comprehensive listing of publishers’ presence on Twitter in PW Daily. To be included in that listing, please e-mail Gabe Habash at ghabash@publishersweekly.com by June 20.