What You Need to Know About Blog Interviews

I have had the pleasure of interviewing many authors - some well known - some not. I have a standard questionnaire that I send out via email to all authors requesting interviews. On the questionnaire, which I try to update from time to time, are about twenty questions. I ask each author to answer no more than eight because I may have follow up questions to ask them. The best thing about email interviews (aka blog posts) are that you can take your time answering them, whereas a live interview might cause an embarrassing brain blip. For example - you forget the name of your book - which I did - on the radio - and it wasn't pre-recorded. Yes, I was having one of those days. But with an email interview you only need to answer the questions and make sure you have done a proper edit.

How Do Blog Interviews Work?

You have just released your first book, sent out your press releases and now you are getting requests for interviews. If all goes well you will receive interview requests for t.v., radio, newspapers and blog posts. Blog posts? Can they even generate excitement about your book? That all depends on how you treat the questions sent to you.

That's All?

Not quite. You need to infuse your personality into your interview as well. Let your readers get to know you. Pretend it's a radio interview. How you answer the questions says a lot about you. For example, one worded answers make you sound like an automaton. I have asked the question, "How many books have you written?" and received this answer, "Two." Instead of jumping at the opportunity to promote their other books, the author showed a lack of interest in promoting their work and/or a lack of interest in an email interview. If that is the case - don't agree to do one. If you don't have the time to answer questions in written form, don't agree to an email interview in the first place.

How to Make Your Blog Interview Great

• Make sure you have a healthy balance of questions. For example, include questions that allow new readers to "know" you. Let them know about the quirkiest thing you've ever done, what your favourite recipe is, or what you like to do when you aren't writing. Readers like to know you are not all work and no play. Have fun! Let your personality shine. They like to know "the real you."

• While one-worded answers are a "no-no", taking more than a paragraph to answer a question is also not a good idea. I once sent out questions to an author and she sent me back six pages of answers. Two or three lines will more than suffice for each question. Anymore and it makes you look long-winded.

• Answer questions that will best highlight your book. If the questions all seem to be geared to fictional books, but you have written a non-fiction book, then add your own questions. Most bloggers won't mind.

• Don't have time to answer email questions but want to be featured as a guest on a blog? Send them a pre-made interview they can just copy and paste into their blog. Be sure to include those personal questions, or your interview will seem stuffy and formal. And if the interviewer wants to ask a follow-up question, be nice and answer it promptly.

• Want to spice things up a little and answer the questions as one of your characters? Give that option to the blogger/interviewer - they would enjoy it as much as you would! Better yet, have a pre-made character interview ready so you can always offer that option.

• Be efficient. In other words, when you send back your questions remember to include a JPEG of your cover, a JPEG of yourself, a brief synopsis of the book, your bio (keep it short), links to your website and links to where people can buy your book.

• And last - but not least - make sure you edit your answers. Do a spell check and make sure everything looks good before you press send.