Author AMA – Creative author interviews + free books discussion
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Please, pick questions from different parts of the document, so that you all don’t end up with the same questions from the top/bottom.
You can choose any number of questions, it’s up to you and the other author.
Make it at least 50/50 – half about writing, half about something else. But again, it’s up to you.
When you contact someone for an interview swap, I recommend including your profile links in the message, so that they can quickly check more info about you. Also, include the information about your author platform – where you will post the other author’s interview and where you can share it.
Example: Hi Mary! I found your interview for XXX very interesting. I write Epic Fantasy too. Would you like to swap interviews? I can post it on my website and share it on my Facebook and Twitter. I suggest 10 questions and a 5-day timeframe. You can find more about me here and my books here.
Authors who are going to interview someone they don’t know: do read the other author’s profile, check their blog, website, Facebook, Twitter. It’s actually easy to make an interview more personal even if you don’t know the person.
Example:
You want to interview Mary Jane. She’s 60 years old, writes Contemporary Romance, lives at a big farm house, and is happily married to her high school sweetheart. She started writing only 2 years ago, and before that, she spent her whole life working as a teacher.
You can check out her titles, and if you see something interesting in the blurb, ask something about it. You can ask her an abstract fantasy question, like If you could go to the past and meet your 10-year-old self, what would you tell her? You can ask about Mary’s favorite thing about living at a farm. You can ask her why she started writing, what inspired her?
What you obviously won’t ask Mary: dirty questions, teenage-pop-culture questions, where she sees herself in 30 years, how she would fight a zombie apocalypse, and so on.
This is all very abstract, but you get the point. The questions list is there to make this process easier, but not to pick questions at random. ALWAYS put yourself in the interviewee’s place and think about what questions might be interesting to them and their audience.
Rules for posting your interviews and freebies here in this group