Surviving Live TV Interviews

I was planning on blogging about my bookstore adventures but I worked 15 hours yesterday as a nurse and my brain is fried. Well, more fried than usual, so I thought I'd save that for Saturday and share with you instead my live interview on a local tv talkshow.


Often a show will prep you before hand to tell you which camera to look at how to sit in the chair, warn you not to look at yourself on the monitor, and so forth. This one didn't do that, but I been told by another guest what to expect, so I paid close attention to what the hosts were doing before I had to be on air. The hosts looked at each other and at the camera in the middle. There was more than one camera, so it was really helpful to know which one to look at.

I also know that when I'm not smiling, I look either look homicidal or seriously depressed. Therefore, I made a mental note to keep my lips at least slightly upturned at all times.

I've never done live TV before so a local show was a great place to start. It also helped my nerves that I didn't have too much time to prep. I'm on a serious deadline with the next book so sitting around fretting isn't really an option.

Something else that helped was having an idea of the questions that I'd be asked ahead of time. I knew what the questions were going to be because I suggested them.

Here's a tip for those of you who don't already know, you can send
suggested questions to the show and they often will use them as is. They usually appreciate this because it saves them time and often they haven't read your book.

Another thing I did right was to bring a finished copy of the book and a small stand that it could sit on. This helped the camermen get a good shot of it. I also held it in my lap as I was interviewed and luckily the cameramen zoomed in on it. I signed a copy for the host to thank her for having me on ... (and you never know, she may read and like it and then maybe even talk about it on a later show. Like I said, you never know.)

All in all I think I did fairly well, but you be the judge: