Nobody wants to interview you.
That's the first reality that needs to be dealt with here. As an unknown, self-published author totting up moderate sales, there are no journalists knocking at the door, clogging up your inbox or hassling your phone. No editors are sending hacks to get a scoop off you on your latest book.
But there are a few sites about that offer Self Serve Author interviews. Basically, they give you a list of questions and you fill out the answers. It's more of an application form than an interview really. And, much like applying for a job, you've no idea who, if anyone, will read your answers. And don't expect any replies.
But is it worth doing?
YES, because you're able to think about and write down and correct your answers. You're not being recorded so you can say something, think twice about it and say something else, while deleting your first answer forever. And we're writers, so we've got to be better, more experienced at writing answers rather than speaking them.
NO if you're going to be dull, boring or formulaic. You're an unknown, so interest levels in you are seriously low. So try and think of a way you can make your answers stand out from the hundreds of others. You might not grab any headlines, but you might, just might, interest a few readers enough to check out what else you've written...
I completed another interview last week. My first answers were dull and formulaic. Even I couldn't be bothered to re-read them. Then I deleted them all, and went with this... way more interesting, I think.
Will it help me sell more books? Who knows?
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself...
Chapter One
Jon Lymon toyed with an extra long hair in
his eyebrow, one of the joys of being the wrong side of forty. He was troubled
by the question he'd just been asked. 'Tell us about yourself.' What was there
to tell? What order to tell it in? What did his audience need to know right
now? What kind of information did he need to keep from them in order to
maintain interest and suspense for as long as possible?
He figured it was OK to tell them he was
from south London in England. And that he had two young daughters. He figured
revealing that he’d written three novels was none too controversial either.
That was why he was here, right, to tell people about his books, so maybe, just
maybe, one or maybe even three of them clicked download on Amazon.
So yeah, three books, all thrillers, the
last two a little more horrifying than the first.
Being British, he was a little reluctant to
namecheck the books here. Seemed a bit salesy, a bit too in your face for him,
surely.
The Diamond Rush. Last Night At The
Stairways. The Wronged.
He clearly wasn’t as British as he thought.
Now Lymon began to worry that his answer to
the question was getting a bit too long. He’d lose his audience. He had to do
something, and fast. Before it was too late.
Tell us about your latest book
Chapter Two
Lymon’s latest book, The Wronged, was a
horror thriller that he’d originally written as a screenplay in the early
Noughties. The screenplay had picked up some positive reviews, but he knew
there were faults with it. He fixed those faults and repackaged it as a novel.
A lot of the new stuff in it was inspired
by him being a father and how that was changing him as a person, and how he
knew he couldn’t let those changes take over his life. He had to retain some of
the free will, the passion and the danger that had been in his life up until
then. But what if someone totally changed and completely denied the person they
were for the sake of their child. Surely, there’d be a backlash. Surely, the original animal inside would want to get out…
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