Tag Archives: taglines

How You Can Give Better Author Interviews

As an author, you can expect to receive offers from people to interview you. Such interviews can be in person, or remote by phone or email. The offeror might broadcast the interview on TV, radio, podcast, or publish it in print or online in a blogpost. Today I’ll provide guidance about how to make the most of these interviews.

Images of microphone and pen from Pixabay

The Hermit Option

You may refuse interviews, of course. Some authors remain elusive, hidden from the world. They have their reasons, and that’s fine. I’m not aiming this post at them.

My Experience

I’ve been interviewed six times, which isn’t bad. But I’ve conducted almost seventy interviews of authors, editors, and poets. I’ve done all of these through email and posted them on this website. Just search for ‘author interview’ to find them.

Purpose

You’re trying to entice people to buy your books. Simple as that. All other reasons for the interview remain subordinate to that prime purpose. Make every sentence of every answer support that goal. What follows are my tips for giving author interviews with the aim of selling books.

  • Author Photo

Unless the interview gets broadcast on TV or radio, the interviewer may ask you for an author photo. Use a photo taken recently enough that your appearance hasn’t changed much. Choose a photo that portrays you in a good light.

  • Taglines

When answering a general question about one of your books, like “what is it about?” use a pre-prepared tagline. I alluded to this in a previous blogpost. You should craft brief taglines about each of your books, and practice saying them until you can do so in a natural way without stumbling.

  • The Comedian Mindset

This tip applies more to written interviews where you have time to polish your answers. Though you should strive for honesty, you’re not undergoing a police interrogation. You’re trying to sell books, so reject the first answer you think of and go for the unexpected.

When I advise you to think like a comedian, I don’t necessarily mean to go for laughs. Comedians become skilled at considering several responses to a question and selecting the one they judge funniest. You should select the response you judge will attract people to your book. Consider the odd, the quirky, the answer with a punch or a twist.

  • Well-Edited Answers

Again, this applies to written interviews where you’ve got time to hone your answers. Don’t just jot down answers and click ‘Send.’ If you’ve used misspellings, poor grammar, incorrect references, or awkward sentences in your answers to an interview, why would readers want to read your books?

  • Brevity

I’ve saved the most important tip for last. In any interview, short answers beat long ones. Think like a poet—not to rhyme, but to pack a lot of thought into few words. Write your autobiography some another time.

With those tips in mind, you’ll do well on your future interviews, especially if you’re fortunate enough to be interviewed by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 23, 2024Permalink

Perseverance and Luck—Advice from Shawn Warner

An author sits at a table in a grocery store, trying to sell his book. He’s sat there for hours, ready to sign books for buyers, but few stop to talk, and even fewer to buy. At last, one man does stop, and offers to post a video of the author on TikTok. Soon after, the post goes viral and book sales soar.

Luck?

You may regard that author as the luckiest writer alive, the chance winner of some literary lottery. But I’ve left out parts of Shawn Warner’s story. He might well agree with a quote attributed to filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Perseverance

That book signing in the grocery story hadn’t been Warner’s first. He hadn’t just dashed out a book. He’d been writing for fifteen years, without much success.

The TikTok influencer, Jerrad Swearenjin, hadn’t chosen to post to an uninterested audience about some third-rate tale. The novel, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, delighted the young TikTok readership.

I took the opportunity to hear Shawn Warner speak this past week, and he seemed well plugged in to the current publishing scene. He gave his audience sound, up-to-date advice about the writing business. Although I’ve heard and read some of these tips from others, Mr. Warner conveyed them in plain, easy-to-digest nuggets. I’ll just summarize a few of my takeaways.

Plot vs. Character

You may write either a plot-driven story or a character-driven story, Warner said. But today’s publishers are rejecting the former and accepting only the latter. (This disappoints me, for I like reading and writing the plot-driven kind.)

Characters

You should make your protagonist seem a real person with strengths, weaknesses, and friends. Your antagonist, too, must seem real, with strengths and weaknesses, but the bad guy requires no friends.

Warner discussed what he called the ‘A-Story’ and the ‘B-Story.’ The A-Story involves the external plot, with the protagonist reacting, at first, to events that strike at that character’s weaknesses. The B-Story involves the protagonist’s internal struggle against weaknesses. For books being published today, the B-Story takes precedence. As the tale progresses, the protagonist begins to solve the internal flaw and acts (with what is called ‘agency’) to resolve the A- and B-Stories.

Edit by Audio Recording

Warner suggests making your own audio recording of your manuscript. Then listen to it and edit your written manuscript based on what doesn’t sound right, or where you stumbled while reading.

Taglines

Warner suggests you develop a one-sentence tagline to answer the question, “What is your book about?” For his novel, he says, “It’s about a teenage girl who teams up with a ghost of multiple personalities to solve the mystery of her parents’ murder.” He advises that you memorize and rehearse your tagline until you can roll it out without hesitation. Obviously, you’d want to do that for all your published and upcoming books. Further, I’d suggest a tagline to answer the often-asked question, “What do you write about?”

Conclusion

Mr. Warner offered other bits of advice, but I’ll keep this post short. I’ve blogged before about Malcolm Gladwell’s theory in Outliers that genius requires 10,000 hours of practice, plus luck. I consider Shawn Warner a good example of that. Yes, luck smiled on him that day in the grocery store. But it occurred only after the 10,000 hours of writing, the perseverance to sit for book signings, and the writing of an excellent book.

Perhaps, after the same amount of perseverance, a similar bolt of luck will strike you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 17, 2024Permalink