Speak At Any Venue By Repackaging Your Book

I almost started to write today about tips on finding venues as an author/speaker. It's a valuable topic for authors to think about because every opportunity we have to speak is an opportunity to enhance our communication skills, introduce ourselves to more potential readers, fortify our claim as an expert, and pick up co-marketing opportunities with the organization bringing us in to speak.

I will touch on finding venues to speak in another post soon. But as I started writing, I thought back to the various venues in which I have spoken. Then I started thinking about the clincher for a lot of the opportunities and it was not always the thing I would have pitched if it were up to me to secure the opportunity. But good listening skills and an open mind led to some speaking opportunities I may never had otherwise.

When I first published my novel, The Samson Effect, I made the same mistake many new authors make. I assumed that people and organizations would line up to hear me talk about the fascinating tale I created. Maybe I would throw in some deep "ah-ha" moments when a monumental truth was revealed to me in the writing process. I could talk about securing Clive Cussler's cover quote or the major Hollywood producer who contacted me with interest in the story. I mean, I had some good stuff that would keep people riveted to their seats.

Or so I thought. What was fascinating, amazing, and unbelievable to me amounted to not much more than a thirty to sixty minute infomercial to the event coordinators I was talking with. I picked up a few speaking engagements that way, but that was about it.

Then I had coffee with a colleague who knew I had written the book and had always been supportive of me. Over coffee, he was telling me that one of the local groups he was a member of was discouraged because they were struggling to keep up with the community work that they had a strong history of providing. The path that the conversation took led me to sigh and say something like, "I hear you. Writing this book was one of the hardest things I ever completed. There were times I believed I bit off more than I could chew. You guys need to just keep pressing forward, doing the best you can."

By the time our third coffee was drained, I think I actually succeeded in cheering him up. Later that week, he called me and wanted to see if I could speak to his club and tell them the story of how I was discouraged at times when writing my book and what I did to move past it.

That moment, the clouds rolled back and the angels sang, "Hallelujah!" Not really, but it was an epiphany for me. I had been going about this speaking thing all wrong. I had a novel, not a work of nonfiction that often lends itself to a speaking platform for authors. However, I had a lot of experiences related to my novel that people would want to hear. So I set out on the task of finding out what groups wanted to hear and then see what I could do to meet their needs. Here is a list of some of the subjects that I used The Samson Effect as a prop for another speech:

* Overcoming Distractions and Roadblocks
* Setting Massive Goals And Taking The Baby Steps To Accomplish Them
* Marketing Your Book On A Shoestring budget (What, you thought this blog came to me out of thin air?)
* Setting Up A Website
* Fitting 28 Hours Into A 24 Hour Day
* Understanding US-Arab Relations (This was a fun one. It was to a small group of retired women who knew that the subject matter in my book dealt with American/Israeli/Palestinian relationships. They wanted another take on world events happening during that time)

And the list really does go on. I realized that there were a lot of things that I had the authority to speak on, BECAUSE of my book, even if the speech was not ABOUT my book. Soon, I was visiting clubs and I even started to get calls from organizations wanting me to speak to them.

As you start to think about your potential speaking opportunities, spend some time thinking about what you can speak on that may not have to do with the subject of your book. You have the authority, because of what you went through to be a published author, to speak on project management skills, goal setting, leadership, vendor management skills, work/life balance, and much more.

By listening to the needs of different organizations and adapting your presentation to meet those needs, you will be a much more prolific speaker and find many more opportunities to speak. And the great thing about approaching your speaking opportunities this way is that you can weave your book into the presentation and have them on hand to sell when the presentation is over. I hope this helps to open your eyes to the many opportunities you have to find those speaking opportunities and to weave your book into a presentation that may not have anything to do with your book's subject. It's a great guerrilla tactic to use to actually promote your book to more people.

Tony Eldridge