I've noticed that interviews with famous authors on Youtube get tens of thousand of views, while interviews with less-known authors often get a few hundred or less. (Popular writers are popular, duh!) But my sense is that the interviewers (and publicists and publishers) think that an interview can be a way for an author to attract new readers. I think this is mostly wrong. The main function of an interview is to provide readers with an extended experience of the novel. That is, we go find an interview with the author after we've finished their novel and we want to spend more time with it.
In other words, we don't need an overview of the plot. We don't need an interview that carefully avoids spoilers. Is that just me?
What do you think? Do you seek out author interviews? When you do, what are you looking for?
by thundercatzzz