Wednesday 21 November 2012

Backlog Of Author Quiz Interviews...

Since Author Quiz launched a couple of months ago, several authors have submitted interviews so it’s been great to see the concept getting support from the indie author community.  In recent weeks in particular I’ve received a sudden rush of interviews so as things stand there’s currently a backlog of approximately four weeks for any new interviews to be published.

I’m mentioning this not to deter other authors from submitting their own interviews (I always enjoy receiving new interviews), but as an author myself I know that it can be helpful to have a timescale for promotional opportunities.  I therefore thought it would be useful to mention the current Author Quiz waiting list for the benefit of any authors who like to plan ahead.

One option to get through the backlog would be to increase the regularity with which I upload new interviews to the blog, but I’m reluctant to do this as ideally I like to leave each interview at the top of the blog for at least a few days.  In general the most recent interview tends to get the most page views so I prefer to give each author a turn ‘in the spotlight’ so to speak. 

It’s also worth mentioning though, that at the moment Author Quiz is still just a small blog in its start-up period so the page views won’t be in the thousands.  Having your interview featured on Author Quiz won’t send you shooting up the Kindle charts overnight.  It has generated some sales though, and once an interview is published it’ll stay on the blog forever, so it’ll be there for new visitors to check out further down the line.

I’ve noticed that each time a new interview is published, the previous interviews also tend to pick up a few extra page views as well, so presumably new visitors to the blog are also curious to apparently check out previous author interviews.  As Author Quiz grows and more interviews are submitted hopefully this will continue to be the case, as readers explore interviews from other authors in similar genres to the author that first brought Author Quiz to their attention.  An Author Quiz interview is therefore worth looking at as a long term slow-burning way to increase publicity, rather than a brief one-off promotional opportunity.

I’ve also noticed that the most popular interviews tend to get page views from various sources, so presumably those authors are promoting their interview on various book forums and social media websites.  Using an interview in this way would seem to be a wise strategy as although I’m no marketing expert, I would guess that most customers are more likely to buy a product from a brand which they are already familiar with, rather than buy from an unknown quantity.  So instead of going straight for the hard sell and directing potential readers straight to your amazon page, a well-written Author Quiz can therefore make a useful intermediate stepping stone towards a sale.

Anyway, thanks again to all the authors so far who have taken the time to give an interview, and once again I love hearing from other authors who would like to promote their work and offer their thoughts on the publishing world in general by submitting their own Author Quiz interview.
How To Get Featured On Author Quiz 

2 comments:

  1. I would just like to thank Charles very much indeed for posting my interview on his site, and let him know what a great job he is doing for us.
    Regards,
    John
    (John M W Smith).
    http://www.jmwsmith.webeden.co.uk

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your interview, John. It's great that authors are supporting Author Quiz and hopefully it will continue to grow.

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