What do prospective readers really want to know

As a reader, I seldom know anything about the authors whose books I read. Many of them are well known and appear in old-media news releases and advertising, and sometimes I read about them in the New York Times or an online news page. But more often than not, I usually know only what they've written and little or nothing about them as people.

So why is it, then, that less-known authors are pushed to get involved in social networking and tell the world about their personal lives?

Perhaps I'm too old to change, but frankly, my eyes glaze over when I read the standard blog tour questions that usually include such things as "when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?" and "did you read a lot when you were growing up?"

Everyone seems to ask those same questions and, truth be told, I feel like a jaded party pooper when I think: I just don't care about the answers. I don't want to hear that somebody "always wanted to be a writer" or that "Mrs. Jackson in their 10th grade English class said they would one day be writing bestselling novels."

I know, from my own experience, that writing is a very personal thing, so I'm sure the blog tour interviews are getting heart-felt responses. But I wonder, are those answers selling any books? Do readers care about the fact that some author they've never heard of dreamt of being a writer when they were in the third grade?

Are those of us whose names aren't household words wasting our time telling the world about our personal lives in hopes that knowledge will bring people to buy our books? I'd love to know.