Pros and Cons of Author Interviews

I’m hoping to have two major interviews with some fairly big names in the near future.  However, what I’ve been reminded of while trying to conduct these interviews are both the pros and the cons, which I’ve detailed here.

Pros:

1. You don’t need to prepare a whole new blog post from whole cloth.  By interviewing someone, they’re doing most of the talking.  All you gotta do is ask questions.

2. You get to mix up your blog a bit.  I know people get tired of listening to me yammer on about how to develop characters or whine about how much I dislike outlining, so being able to bring in something new can spice things up.

3. Hopefully you can find more of an audience.  A writer of any talent is going to have an audience, and you want to tap into that source of people to expand the reach of your blog.  For example, the two biggest audience increases I’ve seen came from when I interviewed Sarah Hoyt and JoePeacock(in fairness, Peacock brought in the largest number despite not being as widely sold, mostly because Peacock’s fans are exceedingly loyal).

Cons:

1. Getting a yes can be tricky.  I’ve sent interview requests to more than a dozen different authors.  Roughly half have even responded.  Maybe they’re busy, or maybe I’m too low-brow.  Whatever the case, there have been numerous authors, some not even really well known, that have responded to me with silence.

2. Once folks agree to do the interview, sometimes it takes time to get back the sheet of questions you sent.  I’ve waited for more than two months on occasion.  More often than not, the author usually writes back that he or she forgot(after I send a reminder), so it takes a little longer for them to then go back and answer.  Obviously this can create challenges when you’re trying to plan out a monthly list of subjects for a blog.

3. Half your marketing is done by someone else.  Like I said above, you’re hoping to draw in more of the author’s audience to your site.  However, that relies on them mentioning their interview on their own site.  Some, like the aforementioned Peacock, were great about this.  Others, not so much.  So gaining new readers can be tricky.

Any other thoughts on interviews?  Do you enjoy them, or are they a waste of time?