BOOK NOOK: Thankfully remembering 30 years of author interviews on the radio

We start with the books. That’s simple. Choosing books I want to read that my radio audience might want to know about. That doesn’t mean they’ll want to read them. I hear from people who love listening to authors talk about books they have no intentions to read.

Now comes the tricky part, locating authors and getting them to do interviews. Unknown authors are easy-they crave attention. Famous writers can be difficult. I deal with their people; publicists, agents, etc. During the first ten years I did my radio shows live every weekday afternoon at 2 o’clock.

I would wait for authors to show up. Some were late. Others never showed. The filmmaker Michael Moore was a no-show. No phone call, nothing. Tom Robbins was 30 minutes late. He explained he had been drinking beer at The Trail Tavern with his attorney.

Once we begin interviews my guests will realize that hey, this guy actually read the book. This realization usually makes for better interviews. But not always. Writers on long book tours can be crabby. Doing publicity is their job, I’m merely there to help them. I accept failures.

When I hosted live radio shows there was no net. No delay on the broadcast. If guests swore, belched, coughed, gestured profusely, smacking the microphone, well, that was it. There was no editing. For the last twenty years we have taped the programs. This has positive and negative aspects.

Positive: clocks stopped mattering, if a guest is late there’s no audience waiting. We edit out mistakes and lots of other stuff. Some people make clicking noises with their palates before speaking. We try to remove those. Some authors when they are thinking of what they will say next will not pause, instead they can nervously fill that space by saying “um” or “ya know.” We can remove some of that.

Negative: cell phones. We tape phone calls. Land-lines sounded great. Now nobody has them. Cell phones sound atrocious. So much for technological progress. When we go back and listen to recordings of live interviews they usually sound way better than the ones we record today. When guests presume we can bleep them or edit out any random noises they do feel more free to do it. Oh, they’ll fix it.

I want to thank some loyal readers who have sent me wonderful letters. Juanita in Piqua is glad I finally updated my column photo. Ann in Dayton-she knows and understands cats. And Perry in Yellow Springs; the world’s greatest baseball fan.