Teaching, speaking and workshops
For a great many nonfiction authors, speaking is the larger income line and the book is the smaller one. That is not a failure of the book. It is the arrangement working correctly.
The relationship is worth stating plainly, because authors usually have it the wrong way round. The book is not the product. It is the credential — the thing that makes a stranger with a budget believe you are worth an hour of their audience's time. A published book turns "someone who knows about this" into "the author of the book on this," and that phrase is what gets you introduced.
Then the loop closes. A talk sells books at the back of the room to people who have just spent an hour deciding they like you, which is a far better transaction than a stranger passing a table. And the talk gets you the next talk, because somebody in the audience runs something and is short of a speaker.
Where the work actually is
The list is longer than most authors assume, and almost none of it is found by waiting to be asked.
Libraries. They run events constantly, they book local authors, and the staff talk to each other across a county. Often the first yes you get. See Selling to schools and libraries for the buying side of the same relationship.
Schools and colleges. Strong for children's, young adult, history, science and memoir. Expect to work harder — an audience of thirty teenagers is the most honest room you will ever stand in.
Clubs and societies. Every town has dozens: history, gardening, walking, genealogy, business breakfasts, retirement groups. They meet monthly, they need a speaker every single month, and they are perpetually short of one.
Professional associations and conferences. The best paid and the slowest to reach. Their programs are set a long way ahead, so you are pitching for next year, not next month.
Companies and staff groups. If your subject touches health, communication, money, resilience or a technical field, internal sessions exist and are budgeted differently from everything else on this list.
Be honest about the first few. Early bookings are usually unpaid or barely paid, and they are how you get good. Your first talk will run long, the middle will sag, and you will discover which story lands. You want that happening in a library on a wet Tuesday, not at the conference that mattered.
What to have ready before you ask
One talk at three lengths. Not three talks — one, cut to fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes, and a half-day workshop. The fifteen is a panel slot or a festival stage; the forty-five is the standard library or society booking. The half-day is where teaching begins and the economics change, because a workshop is worth more than a talk and comes out of the same material.
A short speaker bio, third person, three or four sentences, ready to paste into someone's listing without editing. Whoever writes the event page will use exactly what you send.
A photograph. One good one, high resolution, that does not look like a cropped wedding photo. See The author photo, and where it belongs.
A one-page description of what the audience gets. Title, the three things they will come away with, the lengths you offer, the equipment you need, and how to reach you. Written for the organizer, whose actual question is whether this fills an hour and makes them look good for booking you. This page lives in the same folder as everything else in The press kit nobody asks for until they do.
In the tools. Mockups render your finished wrap as a physical book and the Social Pack makes matching stills from the same cover — the images an organizer needs for the event page, and the slide you put up when you mention the book. Start your book → · about the tools
Selling at the back of the room
Ask first, in advance, in writing: are you permitted to sell? Some venues forbid it, some take a percentage, some require the sale to go through their own till, and a few schools cannot handle money at all. Finding out in the hall ten minutes before you start is how a box of books goes home unopened.
If the answer is yes, the mechanics are those of any live sale — stock, change, a card reader, a price where people can see it — and they are covered in Events, signings and selling books in person. The difference is timing. Say once, near the end, that there are copies at the back, then stop and take questions. An audience that has just applauded will walk toward you anyway; a closing sales pitch undoes the hour.
If you write fiction
This works, but not the way it works for nonfiction, and novelists get it wrong by talking about the plot.
Nobody books a talk about the story of a book they have not read. They book a talk about the subject around it: the period you researched, the industry you worked in, the place the novel is set, the archive you spent two years inside. Failing that, the writing life itself is a reliable subject — how a book gets made, what an editor does, how long it takes — which is standing-room material at libraries and writing groups.
Same rule as pitching a podcast: lead with the episode, not the book. See Podcast interviews, and how to get on one.
Every event makes the next one easier
Take three things away from each booking, and ask for them on the day rather than by email a week later. A recording, even a phone on a tripod at the back, so the next organizer can see you speak instead of taking your word for it. A testimonial, two sentences from whoever booked you, while they are still pleased. And a photograph of you in front of an audience, which does more for a speaking page than any description you could write.
Three bookings in, you stop asking and start being asked. The book is what started it.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: The press kit nobody asks for until they do · More: Events, signings and selling books in person · Selling to schools and libraries · The author website, reduced to what it needs