At Hammock, we get to interview people all across the country—and sometimes on the other side of the world. We love talking to these people face to face, but since many of them live and work thousands of miles away from our Nashville office, we interview most of them by phone. But what about the days when we can’t catch a busy business owner in the office or need to speak to a history expert six times zones away? In cases like these, e-mail is the easiest, most efficient way to do an interview.

As with anything, there is an art to conducting a good e-mail interview. While you don't have the advantage of interacting and conversing with sources, you can still get the information you need without ending up with a bunch of stale, lifeless quotes. Here are a few of our secrets to interviewing via e-mail:

The late NBC political bureau chief Tim Russert, who passed away last week, was famous for the behind-the-scenes preparation he put into interviews on his weekly show, “Meet the Press.” He never interviewed politicians without knowing every stance they’d taken, every vote they’d cast or every statement they’d made on the record. Even America’s most celebrated interviewer, Barbara Walters, doesn’t wing it. After poring through research on her subject, she jots her questions down on index cards, and shuffles and reshuffles until she finds the right order.

Maybe your next interview isn’t with a politician or a celebrity, but preparation is still important because it gives you the credibility you need to connect with whomever you interview. Sure, you’ll run into some sound-bite-friendly folks who are natural talkers and will give you great quotes no matter what you ask. But it’s a better bet that you’ll have to deal with awkward silences, canned responses, hidden agendas and occasional egos—so you must be ready. Read on for five tried-and-true steps we use to prepare for an interview.

A magazine article is only as good as its source. But breaking into unfamiliar territory to find the perfect source is no easy task. Where do you turn when searching for a source takes you on a wild goose chase? After a number of trials and errors, we’ve adopted a few general rules to help us find good sources fast.

Here are some tips that work for us: