I came across an interesting article in the New York Times in honor of today’s French holiday, Bastille Day, celebrating the French Revolution.

Author Matt Stewart has been working on a novel entitled, “The French Revolution,” for five years now and hasn’t had any luck selling it to publishers.  Sick of waiting for the “old-fashioned media empire” to publish his novel, Stewart introduced the book to the world via social media, 140 characters at a time.

According to Times Bits blogger Matt Richtel, “Starting this morning (Bastille Day), Mr. Stewart began tweeting the novel, which revolves around a San Francisco family in an environment and story loosely based around the French Revolution.”  Stewart calculated that it would take 3,700 tweets to tell his story, yet he’s still not sure how often he will tweet.

I love his business model:  ”If people get really annoyed by the updates, there is a solution.  If they want to make me stop, somebody has to buy the book.”

According to Richtel, it’s not new to tweet a novel.  I agree with Richtel in that what’s noteworthy about Stewart’s attempts is not the medium, but the emotion of hope.  ”Writers don’t know and can’t control whether the work will be purchased and published or how it will be edited and marketed (if at all),” says Richtel.

What are your views on reading a novel via Twitter?  I think it’s a “novel” idea to get a sneak peak of the book you’re about to purchase, but for me, nothing can replace the experience of relaxing on the beach with a good book, which I will be doing in less than a month!