Inside The Writer’s Mind

Wow!  That was intense.  Imagine doing twelve interviews in one morning, including four 10 minute interviews back to back without a break.  If you ever find yourself doing radio publicity for one of your books you just may have to do it too.  It’s exhilarating and nerve racking at the same time.  I wouldn’t have missed that experience for anything.

So, how did I do?  I’d give myself a B+.  I think I was entertaining, informative and more often than not, I got my main points across.  Where could I have improved?  Two areas.  For one, I didn’t always mention my web site in the interview, which after all was my main objective: to build the brand called Carl Weisman.  In my defense some of the interviews were only 3 or 4 minutes long.  That’s the first lesson I learned about live radio shows.  Sometimes you go longer than anticipated and other times you go less, a lot less.   You have got to be ready for anything.

The other area in need of improvement is sales.  When you do any kind of media interview for your book, you don’t want to tell people about your book, you want to get people excited about buying the book. That means you don’t say too much.  You have to train yourself to give partial answers to the interviewer’s questions.  When you’re done, the audience should be dying to know how the story ends.    When an interviewer asks me a question about my book, I get so excited I want to tell all, but that doesn’t benefit book sales.  I need work in that area.  There’s no substitute for experience.

The good news is that I still have three or four more interviews this weekend and the upcoming week.  I get to practice what I have learned.  In the meantime, if you would like to hear one of my live interviews from last week, click here.  I was on the Dr. Pat Show in Seattle, and she was just great.  Not only was she a terrific host and very interested in the subject of So Why Have You Never Been Married, she actually had a never married male friend of hers on the show who had read the book.  It was a great conversation and actually confirmed something I had hoped all along: that men would find the book compelling.

Have you ever been interviewed by the media?  If so, what lessons have you learned?  Let me hear from you.

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