I get at least one request for an interview every month, usually several. I've answered these questions over and over again in various venues.
How less beloved will I become if I suggest to the interviewer he or she go online to find the answers to their questions and then just ask me the questions they couldn't find answers to.
On a scale of 1 to 10...with 1 being most beloved and 10 being total grump...what rating would you give me if I started doing this?
I appreciate the desire to challenge interviewers to ask more than the basic, obvious questions, but there is one caveat. Readers of the interview may want some of the basics covered, especially if they're familiar with some of the high points of your career or your most recent work. Ideally, the interviewer should cover a lot of that in the introduction, but not everyone realizes that.
ReplyDeleteInstead of this, how about having a pre-prepared page with your answers to the most common questions asked to you? This way, you could give them the page and tell them to ask you anything else besides these. No grumpiness at all! :)
ReplyDeleteThomas Arvanitis
As somebody whom you favored with an interview last year, I must say how much I appreciated the time you spent answering my questions, even if some were basic and obvious.
ReplyDeleteI'd say about an 8. While they should do some research, and it's got to be a pain to answer the same question over and over again, many interviewers would rather rely on first person information instead of running with something from another interview for a variety of reasons. Off the top of my head, one reason could be that they want to make sure they get the most accurate info directly from the source, not filtered or edited by another journo. Also,depending on the circumstance, unless it's credited correctly, it could be a case of plagurism (sic). Just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI'd also say about an 8. I can understand your point. Look upon those interviews as networking and getting your name out there. Who knows? Some work (paid) may come out of them. - A.
ReplyDeleteI also interviewed a few years ago and you were both helpful and charming. However, while I understand entirely how 'sameold, sameold' hearing those questions may be, neither the interviewer or the interviewee know if the person who may eventually read that interview is having their first experience with Tony Isabella's career or not. That reader may well have never read a single story of yours up to that point and this interview may well spark them on to buying that collection of Isabella written Defenders, simply because something in that interview (about which the two folks who conducted the interview will likely never know) sparked their interest and opened their wallet. I know for a fact that I've purchased comics and collections that I would never have looked at because I liked the tone of an interview or the answers the fella being interviewed came up with. The George Kashdan that ran a year or so ago in Alter Ego comes to mind as a case in point. Also, as Mr. Gatevackes mentioned, pre-prepared answers can come off sounding canned and, frankly, can make it look like the interviewer is plagiarizing a previous interview or another interviewer. Not cool at all.
ReplyDeleteIf you created a FAQ document, the interviewer could use information from that to write up an introduction to their interview before coverring the more specific/topical questions they asked you.
ReplyDeleteIt's annoying, but the flipside is no-one calls you at all. Better to have to repeat yourself than be ignored.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to consider is charging for the interviews, depending on the venue. Maybe you already do this. After all, they are using your content to sell/promote wherever they are going to publish it, and it seems that unless you are getting a needed publicity bump for a project, that you should be paid for providing material. This would make the need for regurgitation easier, since at least it's on their dime :)
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