Authors, Please Ditch Your Interview Talking Points. Here’s Why
At some point, as a writer, you’ll start giving interviews — people will want to talk to you about your book, writing process, what inspires you, and what your general life is like. This progression is a good thing, as it means more exposure for your work and expansion of your reach.
But I see it all the time. PR representatives — or authors themselves — send me press sheets highlighting what an author can talk about.
I never want to book those authors.
What’s new?
Part of my due diligence when I schedule an interview is to look at other interviews from the author. Inevitably, the authors who have sent me press sheets with talking points start sounding like a broken record. My novelty-seeking brain starts getting antsy, and I think, “Meh. I’ve heard this all before.” I wonder to myself, “If I have this author as a guest, what are they going to give me that’s new or unique?”
I understand why PR reps and independent authors use press sheets. They’re shorthand, allowing recipients to quickly assess whether the individual to be booked is a good fit. They help authors stay calm in the cushion of familiarity.
But part of an author’s job is to bring value to every single interview they do. You can have talking points and still do that, but especially given how fast media moves and how much noise is out there, you have to commit to sharing something different within those talking points every time. Otherwise, the script you’re using shows like dirty underwear. The person interviewing you is guided to the exact same questions everybody else has asked. The audience gets bored and, with no expectation of getting more insights, stops following you.
Broadening reach
Interview scripts also limit where you can go as an author. Let’s take my devotional, Grace in the Grind, as an example. The book is aimed at Christian professionals, so the obvious script might say to talk about why it’s important to align faith and work or how God can show up in the office. That’s absolutely appropriate for a Christian business audience.
But what if I start talking about the cognitive dissonance involved in managing faith and work? What if I start talking about how uncertainty around personal worth through God can lead people to burn themselves out trying to earn their own value? Those are psychology and wellbeing points. If I’m careful to acknowledge the ideas from a more general faith viewpoint, now I can look to be a guest with completely different shows or publications that might be outside the business space. This is integrative thinking, and many writers struggle to apply it well enough to their marketing.
Conversations, not speeches
To truly make the most of the interview platform, authors should stop thinking of interviews like well-prepped speeches they can play on repeat. Instead, we need to go into interviews treating them like everyday conversations where we have enough experience and compassion to discuss our work through all kinds of different humanized angles. If we can do that, we’ll offer both the novelty and relatability necessary to hold audience interest over time. Healthier long-term book sales will follow.
[Transcript summary]
If you are a writer, then doing any kind of interview is a great way to expand your reach. But here’s my word of caution on interviews. Please do not just make a script for your interviews and use the same talking points on every single interview you do.
Now, I know as a writer how nervous it can make you to do an interview. It’s very anxiety producing. But the problem when you make a script like that and you have individual talking points that maybe even your PR people send out is that, inevitably, all of your interviews start sounding the same. And then the question is, okay, well, what value are you bringing to the next interview, because everybody’s already heard it already.
So, it’s not that you can’t have talking points, per se, but you’ve got to be able to be flexible enough to go ahead and talk about them in a slightly different way every single interview that you do. Be prepared to do that. I promise you, it will make your interviews 100 times better. They will be more flexible, which makes them more relatable, okay, and more enjoyable for the audience.
That’s my word of advice. Take care. Bye.