I was asked why I do not do interviews with creators or publishers any more? The truth is that no one is standing out enough for me to be interested in interviewing them. Also, as with Michael Cho, I like catching people at the start of their careers and at the time I stated that Cho had the talent to make it into mainstream comics and he did.
When a company or independent/small press publisher had a book to promote they would get in contact because they knew I would have an attitude that was not negative or overly butt sniffing positive. The best reviews I have given are for books the creators of which I really hate but it is not personal opinion it is the work I am looking at.
Now people think "I have a blog so I can publicise my books myself!" but 20-30 views a day or even a week is not great. On average CBO gets between 2500-3000 world wide views a day and publishers tend to see interest in their web sites and blogs picking up after links are given here -even sales increase slightly (that is never a guarantee).
And, of course, so many people who publish a 20pp small press comic feel they are stars and I know of four who stated that they were headed for the Big Time (they stated that 15-20 years ago and no sign of them yet). I had three creators self publishing who wanted me to promote their comics and I responded that I reviewed everything sent in. I was then told how much a review book would cost me. Bye-bye!
I do get 3-6 people each week tell me they have a new book and they are open to interviews but their books do not exist and they want their crowdfunding promoted. I do not do that. "I'll send a review PDF" usually gets the response "No. Not interested" because after LOTS of problems with promoting books by PDF reviews in the early -books that never appeared and people who ordered never got their books or money back CBO does not even open PDFs sent.
People assume that they do not need people promoting them and so no interviews whether mainstream ,Independent or small press. I have not stopped but in a world where someone publishing one book that no one has ever heard of tells you what he expects to get paid for interviews you can tell things have gone wrong!
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