When I was working as a web & social media marketing manager at CRC Press / Taylor & Francis Group, I was responsible for ramping up and running their author video program.
This involved researching and coming up with a robust list of pertinent and interesting questions to ask our authors about their books. I attended a variety of industry conferences, such as mathematics and food science shows, related to our book disciplines, and personally interviewed a variety 
of our authors and editors with a flip video camera.
We found the authors were very excited to talk about their books. They were able to bring personality and life to some of the drier engineering and statistics titles, and bolster interest in their new titles. They often deviated from the scripted questions and shared candidly.
We posted the videos right after the conferences when they were still timely and relevant, and occasionally included them in our post show promotional emails. They were viewed by many of the attendees and become an important part of our book promotion efforts.
