Paid Speaking Engagement Prep for Authors

Speaking engagements are a fantastic way to sell books as an author. It's also a bonus when you can be paid to speak and sell books as part of the arrangement. But a lot of authors think that they can write a book, step on stage, and be paid for all of that without really prepping or having a lot of things in place first. And that rarely happens if you're planning to get speaking engagements as part of your book marketing or as part of what happens after your book is out, especially if you want to be paid for those talks. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish, and promote a nonfiction book that grows your brand, builds your business, and makes you money. Our superpower is caring more about you and your book than any other company as we support you to succeed. And the best part? You get to keep all the rights and royalties and have full control. So you're writing a book. Or maybe your book is written and you want to leverage it into speaking engagements. That's wonderful. I've found that giving talks to be one of the best ways to connect with new people, spread a message, and sell books. If you've never given a talk before, you really need to be ready for this. And there's a lot more to it than just putting some PowerPoint slides together and standing up and delivering your expertise. So. So there's a few things you should have in place before you begin pursuing speaking engagements. The first thing is your talk topics. The cool thing for authors is that if you've done a really good job of crafting a book with a juicy hook that rhymes. Crafting a book with a juicy hook and you've been following what I teach, you likely have chapters in your book that would make a good talk. So you can pull out some of those ideas and put them on your speaker's one sheet. You know, something that looks like this or this. Keep in mind the audience that are likely to hire you and if you're expecting to get paid in a keynote type of scenario where you're going to transform the way the audience sees a situation or you give them a new way to think versus a workshop scenario where you're giving tactical, practical tools, tips and approaches to solve a problem. Those are very different talks that would have very different talk titles. So you want to iron that out first. Number two, the core of your presentation. Rehearsed and ready. I have a confession. Some of the talks I've given have consisted of Me throwing together some PowerPoint slides, getting on stage and walking the audience through them. That is what you should not do, especially if you want to be paid for your speaking engagements or you want an engagement to roll into referrals to other engagements. I heard Michael Port speak recently. He's a professional speaker trainer and he said you can compare the show Hamilton on Broadway to an improv show. Tickets to Hamilton are 500 to $1,500. An improv show ticket can be $5 to 40 do. Both are very entertaining, but Hamilton is precise, practiced and highly professional improv. While those performers are very practiced in their craft, what you're getting is not a precisely practiced entertainment thing that you're doing for a specific that's coming out, oh, wrong improv. While those performers are practiced in their craft, what you're getting when you go to an improv show is not precisely practiced for specific reaction and emotional feeling. That's why they call it improv. So do you as a speaker want to be an improv show or do you want to be the production of Hamilton? I love that analogy. So are you rehearsed and ready? Because sometimes opportunities come out of nowhere because the speaker they had booked canceled last minute. Number three Speaker Photos like author photos, but it's often full body in action on stage. Having these for promotional purposes can go a long way to looking like the pro that should be paid. At the very least. Follow the advice in the video I have on getting a great author photo to get a professional headshot you can use as a speaker. Number four Practice Time in front of Unpaid Audiences we pitch our clients for speaking engagements and all too often a client who has never spoken in front of an audience at all expects to be paid the first time out. But really, is that reasonable to expect when you've never spoken before an audience? Your material is completely untested. You don't know if you're going to get any emotional reaction or any action taken as a result. Stand up comedians are a great example. You can go to open mic nights on all over LA and you're likely to see a well known comedian practicing material for his or her next show because they're not gonna test out their material on a live audience that's paying them like at the Comedy Store or for recording for their Netflix series until they know it's likely to get laughs. You need to be sure your talk is going to have an impact if you want if you're getting paid for it. So you need to test your stories out and hone your craft in front of lower stakes audiences before you're paid to perform. Number five a demo reel. Besides the fact that you need to test your material, you also need to get a demo reel together because every major booker is going to ask for it unless they've seen you speak or you've been referred by someone they trust completely who saw you speak. When I started speaking, the majority of my talks were in front of meetup groups. These ranged in size from 6 people to 200 people. You can use those groups to record your demo reel and that size was also great because I could see the faces engage in the audience and and even speak to attendees afterwards, so I got a better sense of what material mattered to them. Those meetup groups, by the way, were also incredibly flexible and happy to help me sell my books. In many cases, they actually bought my books in advance, had me sign them, and then gave them to the folks that attended their meetup. As a speaker, you have to start somewhere and I recommend you start smaller and work your way up and build your material. You need to be a highly paid speaker as you go. Have you been paid to speak as an author? Have more to add to this subject or a question, but you're Please share in the comments below and when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbookswag like this oh so soft journal. And if you want more tips, I have a couple of other great videos to help you land speaking gigs and leverage them to sell books like this video right here. So go ahead and check that one out if that's your focus at the moment. But if you're feeling pretty solid on that, this video right here on how to write a great about the Author section is a must watch. You're going to need a great bio for your speakers one sheet and as well as your book page. So go ahead, choose a video, that one or that one and I'll see you there.