Questions to Ask Authors About Their Books
Questions for a writer who has published more than one book, for book club visits, festival panels, and interviews that look across a body of work rather than a single title.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Which of your books should someone start with, and why that one?
Why ask it
A gentle opener that also tells you how they see their own shelf. Many writers recommend against starting with the first book, and the reason they give is usually about craft they only learned later.
What do your books have in common that you only noticed once there were several?
Why ask it
Writers rarely spot their own patterns while working, and critics usually name them first. Asking for the version they noticed themselves gets something more precise than a discussion of themes.
What can you do now that you could not do in the first book?
Why ask it
Framed as skill rather than growth, this produces concrete answers: dialogue, structure, leaving things out, writing shorter. It is also easier for a modest writer to answer than a question about improvement.
Which one was hardest to finish, and what nearly stopped it?
Why ask it
Every list has one that almost did not happen, often for reasons outside the writing: a contract, an illness, a research dead end. This question uncovers it without asking them to complain about anyone.
Which book found the fewest readers, and how do you feel about it now?
Why ask it
Most writers have a book they believe was overlooked, and they are seldom given a chance to say so. Handle it plainly rather than sympathetically, and you tend to get the most candid answer of the conversation.
Do you reread your own work, and what happens when you do?
Why ask it
Answers split sharply between those who cannot bear it and those who edit in the margins. Either way it opens up how they judge their own writing rather than how they defend it.
Where does a book usually begin for you: a character, a line, a place, an argument?
Why ask it
Across several books a writer can see their own starting pattern, which they could not in the first. It also gives you a frame for asking how the current book began differently.
How do you tell whether an idea is a book or something smaller?
Why ask it
Practical craft, and useful to anyone in the room who writes. Answers often involve how long the idea survives neglect, or whether it holds more than one question.
How long is the gap between finishing one book and starting the next?
Why ask it
The fallow period is real and rarely discussed. Some writers start immediately out of fear, others need a year, and the reason they give tells you how the work sits in their life.
Do people or places carry over between your books, deliberately or not?
Why ask it
Recurring names, streets, and preoccupations are often unintentional, and pointing at a specific one is more interesting than asking in general. Readers of several books love this question.
For readers who have finished all of them, what did you plant that nobody has picked up?
Why ask it
This rewards the people who came because they have read everything, and gives the author permission to point at their own buried work. Expect a structural pattern, a joke, or a link between two books.
What has changed about how you are edited over the years?
Why ask it
Later books are often edited more lightly, which writers do not always experience as a compliment. The answer says a good deal about how much scrutiny their work still gets.
How do you handle a book that does not do what you hoped?
Why ask it
Publication after publication makes this a practical question rather than a wound. You tend to hear about deliberately changing direction, changing publisher, or writing the next one faster.
What have you learned from meeting readers that you could not learn from reviews?
Why ask it
Readers at events ask about characters and details rather than significance. Writers often describe being told what a book meant to somebody in a way no review would put it.
What do book clubs usually want to talk about, and what do you wish they asked?
Why ask it
Well suited to a book club visit, since it hands the group a better agenda than the publisher's discussion sheet. It also politely retires the questions the writer has answered thirty times.
How do you feel about the covers your books have been given?
Why ask it
Authors usually have limited say over covers, and strong opinions about at least one. It is a light question that reliably produces a story about the publishing side of the work.
Has any of your work been adapted or optioned, and how close were you to it?
Why ask it
Ask about proximity rather than results, since many options never become anything. Writers can be frank about what they were and were not allowed to influence.
What would you write if you knew it would not be published?
Why ask it
Late in a conversation this often produces the honest answer about ambition: a form they are not known for, a subject too close to home, a book their readers would not buy.
Which of your books do you expect to outlast the others?
Why ask it
It asks for a judgement rather than a preference, and the answer is rarely the best-selling one. Writers who dodge it usually explain why, which is interesting in itself.
What is the next one, and what does it ask of you that the last one did not?
Why ask it
A natural closing question, and the second half stops it becoming a book plug. You learn what they are deliberately making harder for themselves this time.
Talking with a writer about a body of work
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Preparing when there are several books
Read the new one and one older one
You cannot read everything, and pretending is obvious. Reading the latest plus one from earlier lets you ask about the distance between them, which is the advantage of interviewing a writer with a back catalogue.
Check what they are contractually here to promote
Festival and book club visits are usually tied to a specific title. Give it proper time early, then range across the rest, so nobody has to steer you back.
Get the bibliography right
Confusing two titles, or attributing someone else's book, is the fastest way to lose a writer's confidence. Check the publication order and any pen names before you start.
If this is a book club visit
Send two or three questions in advance
Writers prepare better than they improvise, and a heads-up on the specific passages you want to discuss produces fuller answers. Keep the rest of the conversation unscripted.
Decide who is chairing
Groups of ten talk over each other and over the guest. Naming one person to hold the order of questions, and asking members to say which book they are asking about, keeps an hour usable.
Warn them about spoilers, and about disagreement
It is fine for a group to have disliked something, but the writer should not be ambushed. Tell them beforehand that opinions in the room vary, and they will usually welcome the honesty.
What to avoid
Asking them to rank their own books like children
The framing invites a refusal. Asking which one they expect to last, or which one they would rewrite, gets at the same thing and is answerable.
Comparing them to a more famous writer
Intended as a compliment, received as a summary of their whole career in someone else's terms. Compare their books to each other instead.
Asking about sales figures or the next contract
Both are private and often precarious. Questions about the process of publishing are welcome; questions about their income are not.
Treating a series as one long book
Writers of series get asked about the whole and rarely about the individual volumes. Naming the specific book you mean gets a much more specific answer.