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Twitch for Dummies
The first full resource to offer advice on tapping into Twitch Twitch got its start as a live-streaming platform mostly populated by gamers and their fans. It's quickly grown to host streaming events of all kinds―concerts, conferences, production events like podcast recording sessions, and even pro sports. Twitch For Dummies helps initiate those new to streaming with advice on how to launch and build a Twitch channel. Podcasting For Dummies author Tee Morris guides readers through the basics of starting a channel, streaming games or live events, growing and interacting with an audience, and how to overcome common tech glitches. • Build a streaming studio
• Create your Twitch profile
• Find successful streaming strategies
• Interact with your audience This guide offers friendly, reliable advice for broadcasters, marketers, and video fans on how to tap into the most popular online live-streaming service.
• Create your Twitch profile
• Find successful streaming strategies
• Interact with your audience This guide offers friendly, reliable advice for broadcasters, marketers, and video fans on how to tap into the most popular online live-streaming service.
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 14, 2019
35 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Tee Morris
80 books303 followersTee Morris began his writing career with his 2002 historical epic fantasy, MOREVI The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana. In 2005 Tee took MOREVI into the then-unknown podosphere, making his novel the first book podcast in its entirety. That experience led to the founding of Podiobooks.com and collaborating with Evo Terra and Chuck Tomasi on Podcasting for Dummies and its follow-up, Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies. He won acclaim and accolades for his cross-genre fantasy-detective Billibub Baddings Mysteries, the podcast of The Case of the Singing Sword winning him the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama. Along with those titles, Tee has written articles and short stories for BenBella Books’s Farscape Forever: Sex, Drugs, and Killer Muppets, the podcast anthology VOICES: New Media Fiction, BenBella Books’ So Say We All: Collected Thoughts and Opinions of Battlestar Galactica, and Dragon Moon Press’ Podthology: The Pod Complex.
In 2011, Tee returned to his first love—fiction—with the steampunk romp Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, co-authored with Philippa Ballantine. This debut novel from Harper Voyager won the 2011 Airship Award for Best Steampunk Literature. Now the series includes The Janus Affair (Harper Voyager), Dawn's Early Light (Ace Books), and the Ministry Protocol anthology (Imagine That! Studios). Find out more at ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com.
When he is not writing, Tee enjoys life in Virginia alongside Philippa Ballantine, his daughter, and three cats.
In 2011, Tee returned to his first love—fiction—with the steampunk romp Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, co-authored with Philippa Ballantine. This debut novel from Harper Voyager won the 2011 Airship Award for Best Steampunk Literature. Now the series includes The Janus Affair (Harper Voyager), Dawn's Early Light (Ace Books), and the Ministry Protocol anthology (Imagine That! Studios). Find out more at ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com.
When he is not writing, Tee enjoys life in Virginia alongside Philippa Ballantine, his daughter, and three cats.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 27, 2024
This book came out in 2019, and technology is exponentially changing that in 5 years, unfortunately, a lot of what is on Twitch now is not only different but I didn't find this book as helpful as I would've liked.
I was looking for help with setting up alerts, but this book didn't have that. It really is a book for absolute beginners as it delves into how to create a Twitch account, how to connect your console or PC, and how to set up your profile.
This book, I believe, helped me most with setting up a bot, but then I had to watch videos on YouTube to continue as it did not delve in deeper, and do some trial and error myself.
I recommend this book if you're an absolute beginner to not only Twitch, but creating profile accounts but due to the book's age, the information is somewhat outdated at the time of this review.
I was looking for help with setting up alerts, but this book didn't have that. It really is a book for absolute beginners as it delves into how to create a Twitch account, how to connect your console or PC, and how to set up your profile.
This book, I believe, helped me most with setting up a bot, but then I had to watch videos on YouTube to continue as it did not delve in deeper, and do some trial and error myself.
I recommend this book if you're an absolute beginner to not only Twitch, but creating profile accounts but due to the book's age, the information is somewhat outdated at the time of this review.
May 3, 2019
My kids and I have a YouTube channel (which is linked from my profile and which we use to help us review Amazon products sometimes). Twitch is something similar to YouTube except it is a place for streaming videos which stay there temporarily before disappearing, whereas YouTube is a place for putting videos permanently. The streaming has the advantage of allowing you to interact with people live in chat creating a community of people with a similar interest, and the Twitch videos can be made permanent too with a little effort by transferring to YouTube which can be done in a user-friendly way (as described in this book).
Anyway one of the things we might venture into in the future is for our YouTube channel is gaming videos and this is part of the reason I got this book, to explore that. The first take-away from this book is that if you have a PS4 or XBox One you can basically set streaming up with the click of a few buttons. It really is simple (according to the book, I haven't actually tried yet).
So why haven't I set up a Twitch account yet? Lots of reasons - if you want to stream you have to dedicate time. A good thing about this book is that it points out what is important in life - those you live with (i.e. family). There is a special section about this, and also the book has a section on burnout too with advice about that. Also if I was to set up a Twitch account it would be for my children for their gaming, and they would need to be 13 (with parental support) to do that and they are currently younger than that. And beyond that the book makes it clear that it isn't a quick and easy way to make money so there isn't an immediate incentive there.
However that doesn't mean I won't set up a Twitch channel at some point in the future. We may set one up to do a private stream as it seems an easy way to get video of our gameplay (from XBox One in our case, but also would work for PS4, not so easy to set up for PCs and other consoles according to the book) without the use of a capture card, with the footage then being able to be downloaded and edited for YouTube videos. And also if in the future one of the kids gets super good at a game it would be good to stream them playing that as people like to look at the best playing the games they like, so this would make it easier to build an audience.
Other things to mention about this book include that it could get out of date. As the author himself says "as a writer, I can say without question that tech books are the hardest thing to write as changes can occur overnight. Terms of Service can be amended. UIs can be upgraded or rearranged, as they already have been between writing and editing this chapter. You name it, the book might end up dated on Release Day." Also to note that this book is for beginners to help with "learning what kind of platform Twitch is and what its potential could be" (I am a beginner and I think it fulfilled that purpose). Also this book isn't the Twitch bible and there are other resources available out there, some of them linked from this book.
Another take away from this book is that Twitch is not just for gamers. There are other streams out there too (e.g. artists creating art that the people in the chat help shape the direction of). True "the gaming aspect of Twitch predominates this book without question" and the platform too, but there are non-gaming streams, streamers and opportunities for you.
Of course Twitch isn't the only option for streaming (YouTube Live, Facebook Live...) and this book doesn't really cover the pros and cons of the alternatives, but it does make it clear that it is easy to stream video game footage to Twitch, whereas the other options might be better placed for other types of stream.
Overall then I am happy to have read this book to find out more about Twitch. I am also happy to have this book on hand for if my kids ever want to set up a Twitch channel, and even if that is in a few years from now I don't think the platform will have changed drastically, despite mentioning the potentially for this book to date above, to prevent this book being useful for that.
Anyway one of the things we might venture into in the future is for our YouTube channel is gaming videos and this is part of the reason I got this book, to explore that. The first take-away from this book is that if you have a PS4 or XBox One you can basically set streaming up with the click of a few buttons. It really is simple (according to the book, I haven't actually tried yet).
So why haven't I set up a Twitch account yet? Lots of reasons - if you want to stream you have to dedicate time. A good thing about this book is that it points out what is important in life - those you live with (i.e. family). There is a special section about this, and also the book has a section on burnout too with advice about that. Also if I was to set up a Twitch account it would be for my children for their gaming, and they would need to be 13 (with parental support) to do that and they are currently younger than that. And beyond that the book makes it clear that it isn't a quick and easy way to make money so there isn't an immediate incentive there.
However that doesn't mean I won't set up a Twitch channel at some point in the future. We may set one up to do a private stream as it seems an easy way to get video of our gameplay (from XBox One in our case, but also would work for PS4, not so easy to set up for PCs and other consoles according to the book) without the use of a capture card, with the footage then being able to be downloaded and edited for YouTube videos. And also if in the future one of the kids gets super good at a game it would be good to stream them playing that as people like to look at the best playing the games they like, so this would make it easier to build an audience.
Other things to mention about this book include that it could get out of date. As the author himself says "as a writer, I can say without question that tech books are the hardest thing to write as changes can occur overnight. Terms of Service can be amended. UIs can be upgraded or rearranged, as they already have been between writing and editing this chapter. You name it, the book might end up dated on Release Day." Also to note that this book is for beginners to help with "learning what kind of platform Twitch is and what its potential could be" (I am a beginner and I think it fulfilled that purpose). Also this book isn't the Twitch bible and there are other resources available out there, some of them linked from this book.
Another take away from this book is that Twitch is not just for gamers. There are other streams out there too (e.g. artists creating art that the people in the chat help shape the direction of). True "the gaming aspect of Twitch predominates this book without question" and the platform too, but there are non-gaming streams, streamers and opportunities for you.
Of course Twitch isn't the only option for streaming (YouTube Live, Facebook Live...) and this book doesn't really cover the pros and cons of the alternatives, but it does make it clear that it is easy to stream video game footage to Twitch, whereas the other options might be better placed for other types of stream.
Overall then I am happy to have read this book to find out more about Twitch. I am also happy to have this book on hand for if my kids ever want to set up a Twitch channel, and even if that is in a few years from now I don't think the platform will have changed drastically, despite mentioning the potentially for this book to date above, to prevent this book being useful for that.
November 19, 2022
I read the paperback version of twitch for dummies second edition. I read the first edition of Twitch for dummies so when I saw the 2nd edition I thought why not read it.
Twitch for dummies goes through everything I think I would need to get a twitch channel up and running. For the consoles it focuses on how to stream from xbox or playstation. I also learned how to decided what games to stream. And later it talks about when you want to move beyond the console and stream using it a computer. It talks about how to set up ops. I also learned how to set up a stream labs assistant for chat. The book also talks about how to find music for your stream.
Two things I learned that I had no idea about was hate raids and that you are responsible for what people post in your chat.
My favorite chapters were 15: Twitch outside of gaming which talked about nongame streamers, chapter 16: 10 life lessons from twitch which talks about life lessons that twitch streams have learned from twitch, Chapter 17 in which tee talks about his lessons from twitch.
One story I liked in chapter 17 was when Tee went to a concert of his daughters and pushing back his stream time and then watching the clock. And he learned that twitch streaming is important to him but, its not the most important thing in his life.
I thought I would surely do the same thing thinking that I have to stream no matter if I had other things to do that were more important.
Twitch for dummies goes through everything I think I would need to get a twitch channel up and running. For the consoles it focuses on how to stream from xbox or playstation. I also learned how to decided what games to stream. And later it talks about when you want to move beyond the console and stream using it a computer. It talks about how to set up ops. I also learned how to set up a stream labs assistant for chat. The book also talks about how to find music for your stream.
Two things I learned that I had no idea about was hate raids and that you are responsible for what people post in your chat.
My favorite chapters were 15: Twitch outside of gaming which talked about nongame streamers, chapter 16: 10 life lessons from twitch which talks about life lessons that twitch streams have learned from twitch, Chapter 17 in which tee talks about his lessons from twitch.
One story I liked in chapter 17 was when Tee went to a concert of his daughters and pushing back his stream time and then watching the clock. And he learned that twitch streaming is important to him but, its not the most important thing in his life.
I thought I would surely do the same thing thinking that I have to stream no matter if I had other things to do that were more important.
March 15, 2019
Before reading this book I had heard of twitch and been to the twitch website. I had no idea how to stream on twitch. Now after reading the book I know how to stream on twitch. One of the interesting things I learned it that twitch is not just for video games.
I set up a twitch account and set up nightbot for the chat. It was fun. I also followed some twitch accounts. What I have to do is stream because I don't have anything to stream with. But, someday I hope to stream on twitch. I thought do I really want to stream on twitch. But, it sounds exciting. How many people could I get to watch my twitch. Would I find anything to talk about. Can I stream for at least 3 hours? Would I run out of things to say?
This book goes into everything I ever wanted to know about streaming on twitch, How long should the stream be, the pros and cons of types of video games to stream, how to set up your xbox, playstaion, or computer to stream, how to set up your twitch account and more. I liked the book.
One of my favorite twitch accounts from the book is skFroi who codes and speaks Spanish on his stream.
I set up a twitch account and set up nightbot for the chat. It was fun. I also followed some twitch accounts. What I have to do is stream because I don't have anything to stream with. But, someday I hope to stream on twitch. I thought do I really want to stream on twitch. But, it sounds exciting. How many people could I get to watch my twitch. Would I find anything to talk about. Can I stream for at least 3 hours? Would I run out of things to say?
This book goes into everything I ever wanted to know about streaming on twitch, How long should the stream be, the pros and cons of types of video games to stream, how to set up your xbox, playstaion, or computer to stream, how to set up your twitch account and more. I liked the book.
One of my favorite twitch accounts from the book is skFroi who codes and speaks Spanish on his stream.
August 25, 2022
Twitchy
This was a good book on Twitch.
I find it wild how much Amazon owns. I say this reviewing a book on an Amazon site, about a book that is sold on Amazon, on the subject of a live streaming platform owned by Amazon.
Makes me want to reiterate How to Resist Amazon and Why.
Yeah, Twitch is cool and all.
I don't really watch any streams and find it a huge waste of time, but that being said, I think PayMoneyWubby is probably my favorite streamer.
4.1/5
This was a good book on Twitch.
I find it wild how much Amazon owns. I say this reviewing a book on an Amazon site, about a book that is sold on Amazon, on the subject of a live streaming platform owned by Amazon.
Makes me want to reiterate How to Resist Amazon and Why.
Yeah, Twitch is cool and all.
I don't really watch any streams and find it a huge waste of time, but that being said, I think PayMoneyWubby is probably my favorite streamer.
4.1/5
January 10, 2023
Was alright.. there are still other books that had a little info in them.. lol
July 30, 2025
solid advice while leaving room for individual preferences. a must have for new streamers and veterans alike
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews