Speaking Engagements

By Rick Frishman - Jan 09 , 2009

Set up your speaking engagements months in advance. For most organizations that book speakers, four to six months prior isn’t uncommon. The largest, most high-powered organizations will hire speakers a year or more in advance.

Host organizations frequently have long lead times and many want to fill out their rosters as early as possible. Closing deals with organizations that host speakers often involves red tape because they have planning committees, program committees, and publicity committees that need information on you and your speech as early as possible so they can prepare their promotional materials. Then, their legal people may also want to get into the act.

Even smaller local organizations such as religious, business, and community organizations need lead time. And the more lead time your can give them, the more smoothly the event will run and the more publicity you usually will receive.

Approach organizations and try to book your speaking engagements early so you can coordinate them with the publication of your book and any follow-up media events. For example, if your speech in Miami is well received, you probably will want to return to Miami on your media tour or to give workshops and seminars. Chances are that you can drum up media coverage for your return appearances on the basis of your prior success. If you will be making future visits, plug them during your speech and tell your audience where those interested can sign up.

If, at events, you will be giving handouts or using visual aids or any type of technology:

• Arrange for all materials to be on hand when you arrive.
• Obtain advance information on the venue, such as its size, dimensions, configuration, sound quality, and lighting.
• Arrange with the organizers to visit the venue before you are scheduled to appear, to check all equipment.

Before you speak at engagements, arrange for copies of your book to be available for sale. At these events, you should be able to sell copies of your book, so coordinate how those books will be sold. The ideal scenario is to build the cost of your book into the admission fee for the event. If the regular fee for the event is $20, the host would charge $39.95 and include a copy of your book, which guarantees you sales. However, this arrangement can be a hard sell with many host groups.

More often, host organizations will permit you to set up a table in the back of the room to sell copies of your book. Set a time, preferably right after you speak, to meet purchasers and sign the copies they buy.

As a condition to appearing at engagements, obtain approval of the host organization to sell your book and your other products. Then have everything else you sell available at the engagements: audiotapes and videotapes, CDs, workbooks, and products. To make these items more attractive, create a special price for this event. If all of your products normally sell for $125, sell them at the special price of $79 for this event.

“Don’t give out ordering information for your book. You want people to buy there,” David Thalberg advises. “You don’t want people to have time to bring something home and think about it. It’s spur of the moment. If you’re a dynamic speaker, they’re going to buy whatever you have to sell. And if you offer the ‘special only-at-this-event discount,’ you’ll increase the likelihood of sales.”

Pitch local media at least six to eight weeks in advance of the date you would like to be covered. If you’re going on a road tour, booking signings or events in other cities, try to generate coverage by their local or regional newspapers, morning shows, and news programs. Pitch the major, most important outlets first. If you start early enough, you will still have time to approach backups if your first choices say no.

When you land an appearance or an interview by a top outlet, use it to get additional medial coverage. Tell your number two, three, and four targets that you’re booked on number one, which can help make you more attractive to them.

Whenever you travel, try to get media coverage. For instance, if you’re scheduled to be in Philadelphia on a business or family trip in early March, contact the top media right after the first of the year. Work from the top down and contact as many outlets as possible to maximize the amount of publicity you could get.

Reserve your flights and hotels at least a month in advance. Better yet, book earlier, but always buy refundable, changeable tickets. Everything always changes with the media. Big shows suddenly drop out or you’re offered a last-minute booking. If, after a morning-show appearance, you’re invited to do a spot on the evening news, your ticket shouldn’t stop you. Look at the additional price of a changeable ticket as the cost of insurance. And it’s usually tax deductible.

Road tours, which formerly were a central part of most publicity campaigns, now occur far less often. Publishers no longer routinely pay for them. In fact, they usually offer them only to their biggest, best-selling authors or authors with established, national platforms.

Authors of real estate and finance books frequently go on tour to promote their upcoming seminars and workshops, where they are virtually guaranteed to sell lots of their books from the back of the room. Occasionally, traditional publishers send authors whom they hope to break out—especially those who write fiction—on tour. Usually, they schedule those authors for readings at key bookstores.

If you want to underwrite your road tour, coordinate it with your publisher. Although they may not pay for your travel, lodging, and expenses, they may advise you on the cities, bookstores, and venues to visit; connect you with important people; and try to get you media bookings.

Conclude your road tours in your hometown and invite the local media. Work the local hometown angle, and the fact that you were just on tour will provide a hook that the local media can use. The fact that you’re a first-time author can also give the media another hook.

Don’t overlook local bookstores, even if they are chains, discount, or warehouse operations. Many of them love the local-author connection and want to be seen as being community-friendly. They may schedule readings and events, recommend your book, and give it prominence on the shelves or in displays. Some also have local-author sections and host local-author readings. Many place a special tag on local authors’ books.

Offer to sign copies of your book for local booksellers. Signed books sell well and they can’t be returned to your publisher.

Author Questions and Answers

Concentrate on preparing questions and answers (Q&As) that will inform the media about the most important content in your book. Write questions that go straight to the heart and soul of the book and bring out its greatest strengths. Compose questions that reveal the most interesting, controversial, earth-shattering, innovative, shameful, and shocking information. Provide emotionally charged answers that are powerful, hard hitting, moving, insightful, and shocking.

Your Q&A is an ideal way to let media outlets hear your voice and learn about your book without having to read it, which most of them simply won’t do. In two pages, you can answer twelve to fifteen questions that will give the media a solid understanding of your book and interest it enough to want to learn more. The media can get a sense of your personality above and beyond the book and of how you answer questions.

• Keep each answer to one brief paragraph that runs no more than three or four sentences.
• Try to limit your Q&A to two pages, but in no cases exceed four—the media won’t read that much.

The idea is to give the media quick hits of information, a taste of your book’s flavor, and a sense of your personality.

As we’ve previously stressed, interviewers, program hosts, and other media people will often ask you the exact questions that you wrote for your Q&A. So, make your questions and answers terrific because they can play a long and crucial part in your publicity campaign.

If you encounter trouble coming up with messages to stress in your Q&As or you have too many messages, consider taking media training before you write your Q&A. Media training can help because it teaches you to identify and more powerfully develop and deliver your most important messages. It will also help you prioritize your messages to get the maximum media response.