1 Book Told in 280 Tweets: 'Cloud Atlas' Author Writes a Twitter Story

 By 
Brian Anthony Hernandez
 on 
1 Book Told in 280 Tweets: 'Cloud Atlas' Author Writes a Twitter Story
Author David Mitchell posts for a portrait for a film based on his book Cloud Atlas. Credit: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP

Author David Mitchell, the mastermind behind acclaimed novels Cloud Atlas and number9dream, is straying away from traditional book pages and more modern ebook platforms to tell his latest tale, opting instead to publish the story on Twitter.

The short book, The Right Sort, will be told with 280 tweets, which began rolling out Monday morning and will continue all this week in twice-a-day spurts until it ends.

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You can read the first part of the Twitter story here in this ever-updating tweet stream, which will automatically populate itself as Mitchell posts more tweets this week:

THE RIGHT SORT

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The Twitter stunt was conjured to promote Mitchell's September release, The Bone Clocks.

Mitchell isn't the first author to leverage Twitter to unravel a tale, though Mitchell's is quite ambitious comparatively. Goosebumps author R.L. Stine in 2012, for example, delivered a short 9-tweet horror story followed by another Halloween story in 13 tweets.

Not much of a Twitterer before this project, Mitchell joined the service primarily to tweet this Twitter story, which he detailed on BBC Radio 4:

BONUS: 11 Terrible Book Covers to Scare You Off Reading

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