Doing Book Research Part 2: Interviewing Experts: How to Write Non-Fiction

"I’m Bobbi Linkemer on behalf of expertvillage.com, and I’d like to invite you to visit my website at writeanonfictionbook.com. I have done a lot of research over the years by finding an expert and interviewing them. This book has 45 interviews in it, and one of the thing that I frequently do is interviews to a company the chapters in my books. Rule number 1 is find the right expert, which is difficult. It’s kind of like the networking that you do. You keep asking people until you find someone that knows your subject. Rule number 2 is when they talk to you, listen. You’re not there to prove how much you know. You are there to find out what they know. Rule number 3 is feedback what you’ve heard. Summarize it in your own words, make sure step-by-step through the interview that you understand what they’re saying and that you can continue with each question to build on the last question and with each interview to build on the last interview. You keep feeding it back and you keep saying here’s what I know, here’s what I think he said. Am I on the right track? You’ll find out if you’re not. They’ll say precisely, exactly, you’ve got it, or that’s not exactly what I meant; let me run through that again. Sometimes you’re writing about a subject you don’t really know very much about and you have to risk looking stupid. You have to be willing to say, I didn’t understand what you said or ask a question. When someone says to you what you know about such and such. If you don’t know about such and such, say no I really don’t could you tell me about that. You really have to put yourself out there and take some risks or you’re not going to get the information you know. This is not a contest; this is a mining expedition for pearls."