Author Interviews – Looking Good on Skype or Google Hangout
by Miral Sattar • May 24, 2013 • Follow miralsattar
Published in Publishing Tips • 13 comments
I was talking to one our authors last week, Deb Chase, who runs the No Nonsense Beauty Blog. She mentioned that most authors look awful during Skype or Google Hangout video sessions. “We all look like trolls online!” she exclaimed.
So we decided to do a best practices for online video tutorial. Here’s what we covered if you’re doing video on a laptop.
1) Find a position that has a blank wall or backdrop that doesn’t have too many items in it and sit with your back facing that wall.
2) Don’t sit with your back to a window. A lot of authors make this mistake and the window flashes out most of the person. You can sit facing a window or perpendicular to the window.
3) Elevate the laptop on a book (or books) so the video camera you have is slightly above your forehead.
4) Keep the laptop at least 1 foot away from you. This will make sure your face doesn’t overwhelm the other screen.
5) Tilt the monitor slightly towards you.
6) Wear darker colors like blue or royal blue.
7) Smile a lot and don’t move around too much!
Following the above directions will make you look much much better on screen and less like a troll 🙂
Try it! Let us know if it worked for you, or if you have any tips.
About Miral Sattar
Lover of books. CEO & founder of Bibliocrunch. Love storytelling in all its forms. Formerly TIME. I'm a new media entrepreneur who has worked in the media industry for 11 years. My mission is simple – to innovate the publishing industry with technology. My company has been featured in BBC World News, Money Magazine, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Forbes, WSJ, MediaBistro, PBS, Columbia Journalism Review, The Next Web, Publishers Weekly, and a bunch of other places. Bibliocrunch was also selected as The Next Big Thing in media by the Paley Center. I also used to run a popular South Asian culture blog called Divanee. Before I ran my own company and became a mom, I used to be on the board for several literacy organizations, and wrote a LOT more. Hopefully, when things are calmer I can go back to that! :)