Six secrets to giving successful and sought after author talks
Recently, an author friend of mine sent me an SOS message – ‘Help! I’m giving my first author talk! Any tips?’ I had heaps! She was so very grateful for the advice that I thought rather than just helping one friend, I’d write a blog about the things I learned and the things I do that I believe have given me success on the library talk circuit.
Giving library talks introduces you to new readers who, being passionate enough about books to go along to author talks in the first place, often end up becoming your most loyal fans. They also introduce you to librarians who are champions of books and who influence what their library members borrow. And, if you’re traditionally published, you get to meet booksellers too who are your biggest advocates. Plus (I think it’s different in every State, so check) here in WA, many libraries pay ASA rates for author talks so one hour’s work earns you $350 – not bad, eh?
So if you’re wondering if a talk is worth giving, the answer is hell yes!
And if you’re wondering how you’ll manage to get up there and talk to a bunch of strangers without wanting to vomit, here’s how:
1. Remember why your audience is there.
Public speaking for the uninitiated is terrifying. The fear of forgetting what you wanted to say, stumbling, getting a dry mouth, saying the wrong thing, boring the audience – almost everyone has that fear of failure.
When I was giving my very first talk for an Indigenous Literacy Foundation Fundraiser held at my children’s school back in 2015, eighty people (most of whom I didn’t know) came along to hear me talk about LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT as a community book-club event. I asked my friend, author Natasha Lester, to please do my reading because I felt paralysed with fear. She did read it for me, but she told me something before she stood up to do it, that really resonated with me, so that by the time she had introduced me and done the reading, I felt confident enough to stand up and speak without passing out.
Natasha said, ‘Everyone in this room is here because they want to be. They want to hear what you have to say.’
And that’s the joyful reality of author talks! We aren’t politicians facing a hostile press, ready to jump on anything we say wrong. We aren’t junior staff having to prove ourselves in front of a giant boardroom of company executives, with our future employment resting on our performance. Rather, we’re placed in front of an audience of people who chose to be there, who came to the library because they find author talks enjoyable.
The audience is there to support you. The people who turned up want to hear what you have to say, they want to learn about you and they want to like you. The audience is on your side when you’re an author.
They’re not sitting there thinking, ‘Ha! Let’s see if she stuffs this up!’
What they are sitting there thinking is, ‘Ooh, I can’t wait to find out more about this author!’
If you have that in mind, and your attitude is one of speaking to a group that you don’t have to convert because they already are converted, they’re already Team You, then you can relax, enjoy and charm the pants off them!
2. All you have to do is talk about your writing journey – that’s all!
I’ve lost track of the amount of authors who’ve said something to me along the lines of, ‘Geez you’re good doing all these author talks, I wouldn’t know what to say.’
My question is, ‘You wrote an entire book. That’s something that should give you hours of conversation. How can you NOT know what to talk about? Talk about your writing journey!'
This is why readers go to library talks, they want to hear about your unique experiences in writing your story.
What motivated you to write it? Did you always want to be a writer? Was there one particular instance that made you become a writer or was it a gradual awakening? How long did it take you to write the book? What was that process like? Did you have writer’s block? What were your other obstacles and how did you get a publishing deal? Did you get rejected? How many times? What made you keep going? Have you made a connection with other authors? Who are they? What do you love about the author community? What’s your publishing house like? Do you write every day? What’s your writing process like? Who are the characters you wrote about and why? What inspired your choice of time and place setting? How did your life change once you were published? Are there any downsides to publication? Which famous authors influenced you? What are your favourite books? When you think of the movie version of your book, who do you picture as your main characters? What do your family and friends think of your success? Have they read your book? Do they think it’s about them? What does a typical writing day look like for you? What are you doing next with your career?
There, I’ve pretty much planned a speech for you! No excuses now for not knowing what to say. Just talk about your unique experience in this literary world.
You don’t need to get up there and be a Rhodes scholar who can dissect a Chekhov narrative, debate criminal law policy in Angola or shed light on the latest findings in stem cell research. You just have to talk about you! And have you met you? You’re awesome, you rock! It’s easy to talk about you.
3. Less about the book, more about you!
Don’t use a library talk as a way to give a half hour run down of your book. The people there are either planning to read your book, have already read your book or have come for the free wine and cheese! Either way, they haven’t come to get the live audio version of your book.
They want to learn about YOU. So only talk about the book when you’re speaking of your connection with your book – things like how the characters formed themselves in your mind and how that felt for you when they came alive, which scene you love the best and why, whether you’ve been to the places in the book and had real life experiences similar to those in the story.
Give the people attending your talk a tour inside your writer’s mind from when you were writing it. That’s what makes you fascinating.
Saying, ‘My book titled________ is set in _________ in the year ________and it has the characters of ________ and __________ who ____________ and then they_____________’ has to be the dullest way to open a talk ever. You’re sharing nothing with your audience that they won’t discover for themselves when they read it, or worse, already know because they have read it.
4. Share stories about yourself that you’ve never shared publicly before.
I have done roughly 8.7 bazillion interviews about my journey to publication and the story behind LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT. At every talk I do, I have new people who are there because they go to all the author talks their library puts on. Often they have never heard of me before, so everything I say is a revelation to them. But there also always others who are die-hard fans that have sat on their laptops and soaked up every bit of information about me that has ever been released. Those people want to know something they haven’t seen in print interviews, read in blogs or heard me say on the radio. So I save some small piece of myself for every talk.
When you do this too, make it something personal, something that will make the people who made the effort to come and see you, feel that they share a special bond with you, because they're privy to information that isn’t widely available to everyone else online. This doesn’t have to be a shameful secret like, ‘I cheated on my fiancé.’ It can be anything from, ‘Nobody outside of this room apart from my husband knows this, but I ate a whole block of chocolate every single day while I was writing this book.’ Or, ‘You might not know this because I never revealed it in an interview, but I had actually chosen another title for the book before this one. My editor hated it so we changed it. My old title was….’
Anything you can say to let your audience feel that you trust them enough to reveal something especially for them that you haven’t revealed before, builds their trust in you and creates more rapport.
5. Talk about your life outside of being an author.
You are more than your author-self. Sharing more of yourself than just how you came to write presents you as a more well-rounded, relatable human being. Tell the audience about your past (briefly, not blow by blow!), or about your current living situation. Start your talk by sharing stuff about you that will orientate the audience to who you are as a person and where you fit in the world before they start hearing about your writing journey.
It can be as simple as,
‘I come from a large Irish family. I was the last of seven kids, so you know, I had to be loud to be heard and here I am thirty-years later, microphone in hand, still insisting on being heard. I live alone with my dog, Bjorn. He’s not named after Bjorn from ABBA or Bjorn from Wimbledon. No, he’s named after Bjorn Westerlund, the CEO of Nokia. Why are you laughing? What’s more important to you guys – be honest now - ABBA, Wimbledon or your mobile phone? Anyway, it was because of something I happened to see when I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone that planted the seed for the book….’
And then keep bringing in parts of your personal life into your speech as it goes on. Remember, your life and your experience is what makes you unique and adds personality to what would otherwise be just another talk about just another book by just another instantly forgettable author.
When I talk about the different stages of my writing journey, I say where I was at at that time in my life in general. Things such as, ‘At that stage my kids were seven and four years old.’ Or ‘That was the day before we had to leave for Europe.’
Dropping in little bits of information like that will have your audience leaving feeling that they got to know you and they will be ten times more likely to look out for future books by you. Why? I just told you why! Because they know you! Of course you’re more likely to look out for a book by someone you know over someone you don’t know, right?
6. Involve your audience in your talk!
My State Manager for HarperCollins, the wonderful Theresa Anns, gave me a pearl of wisdom while she helped my husband/roadie set up my banner to kick off the first talk of my tour in August last year. (While I stood by like the entitled brat that I am, watching and not offering to help!)
She said, ‘Don't forget to ask your audience questions.’
‘Eh?’ I replied.
‘Every five or ten minutes, ask them a question. Any question. It will keep the audience engaged and feeling like they’re an integral part of your talk.’
I wanted to slap that Theresa!
It was the very first talk on my tour, I had a huge roomful of complete strangers waiting for me to begin and I had memorised my entire speech, damn it! This was not the time to throw me a curveball like that! But when my manager, who had to take every HarperCollins author who lived in or visited Perth to every one of their talks for the last twenty years gave me advice, I knew better than to ignore it!
So I started the talk with a question. ‘Hi everyone, I’m guessing as my book was released this week, none of you has a clue in hell who I am and you all came along tonight for the wine and the supper. Am I right?’
Queue laughter, embarrassed nods. Bam! Instant audience rapport.
Clever, clever Theresa.
So even though I had my prepared speech written and memorised, that night I did what she said and every few minutes I threw in a question about whatever it was I was speaking about in that part of the speech. Questions like, ‘Who’s seen Twilight?’ or ‘Do you guys like Maltesers, you know the dark-choc coated ones?’ and ‘Hey who remembers that episode of Friends with Joey’s identical hand twin?’
See what I mean? ANY question will do. Questions keep the audience on their toes, making sure they listen because they know at any given moment you can look straight at them and ask them something. And the other thing is that people love sharing about themselves so they’ll want to connect with you more if they see that you’re interested in them – you want to know if they read your favourite book, you want to know what they think of Oprah.
Just make your questions non- confronting – I wouldn’t say, ‘Hands up if you bullied people at school,’ for example.
And make them answers that need a quick, one second response so that they don't interrupt the flow of your talk. A little rule I have is if they can answer 'yes, no or me,' then you’re on a winner with that question!
10 Practical tips to leave you with:
Don’t ask me how I know these things, alright? Just take my word for it…
I’ve spoken at so many libraries that I’ve lost count. Every time we thought it was over, my publicist emailed me with a new request from a librarian who had heard from another librarian that they should have me at their library.
To steal my friend Bec Sparrow’s words, I’m not a magical unicorn. There is nothing so amazing about me that would make my talks exceptional compared to other author talks. I’m not any smarter, funnier or more charming than the next author.
But what I do during my talks is that I give every audience a new and unique insight into who I really am. I hope your author talks bring you many moments to cherish. So go out there people, give great talks and steal my gigs!
Good luck xx
Giving library talks introduces you to new readers who, being passionate enough about books to go along to author talks in the first place, often end up becoming your most loyal fans. They also introduce you to librarians who are champions of books and who influence what their library members borrow. And, if you’re traditionally published, you get to meet booksellers too who are your biggest advocates. Plus (I think it’s different in every State, so check) here in WA, many libraries pay ASA rates for author talks so one hour’s work earns you $350 – not bad, eh?
So if you’re wondering if a talk is worth giving, the answer is hell yes!
And if you’re wondering how you’ll manage to get up there and talk to a bunch of strangers without wanting to vomit, here’s how:
1. Remember why your audience is there.
Public speaking for the uninitiated is terrifying. The fear of forgetting what you wanted to say, stumbling, getting a dry mouth, saying the wrong thing, boring the audience – almost everyone has that fear of failure.
When I was giving my very first talk for an Indigenous Literacy Foundation Fundraiser held at my children’s school back in 2015, eighty people (most of whom I didn’t know) came along to hear me talk about LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT as a community book-club event. I asked my friend, author Natasha Lester, to please do my reading because I felt paralysed with fear. She did read it for me, but she told me something before she stood up to do it, that really resonated with me, so that by the time she had introduced me and done the reading, I felt confident enough to stand up and speak without passing out.
Natasha said, ‘Everyone in this room is here because they want to be. They want to hear what you have to say.’
And that’s the joyful reality of author talks! We aren’t politicians facing a hostile press, ready to jump on anything we say wrong. We aren’t junior staff having to prove ourselves in front of a giant boardroom of company executives, with our future employment resting on our performance. Rather, we’re placed in front of an audience of people who chose to be there, who came to the library because they find author talks enjoyable.
The audience is there to support you. The people who turned up want to hear what you have to say, they want to learn about you and they want to like you. The audience is on your side when you’re an author.
They’re not sitting there thinking, ‘Ha! Let’s see if she stuffs this up!’
What they are sitting there thinking is, ‘Ooh, I can’t wait to find out more about this author!’
If you have that in mind, and your attitude is one of speaking to a group that you don’t have to convert because they already are converted, they’re already Team You, then you can relax, enjoy and charm the pants off them!
2. All you have to do is talk about your writing journey – that’s all!
I’ve lost track of the amount of authors who’ve said something to me along the lines of, ‘Geez you’re good doing all these author talks, I wouldn’t know what to say.’
My question is, ‘You wrote an entire book. That’s something that should give you hours of conversation. How can you NOT know what to talk about? Talk about your writing journey!'
This is why readers go to library talks, they want to hear about your unique experiences in writing your story.
What motivated you to write it? Did you always want to be a writer? Was there one particular instance that made you become a writer or was it a gradual awakening? How long did it take you to write the book? What was that process like? Did you have writer’s block? What were your other obstacles and how did you get a publishing deal? Did you get rejected? How many times? What made you keep going? Have you made a connection with other authors? Who are they? What do you love about the author community? What’s your publishing house like? Do you write every day? What’s your writing process like? Who are the characters you wrote about and why? What inspired your choice of time and place setting? How did your life change once you were published? Are there any downsides to publication? Which famous authors influenced you? What are your favourite books? When you think of the movie version of your book, who do you picture as your main characters? What do your family and friends think of your success? Have they read your book? Do they think it’s about them? What does a typical writing day look like for you? What are you doing next with your career?
There, I’ve pretty much planned a speech for you! No excuses now for not knowing what to say. Just talk about your unique experience in this literary world.
You don’t need to get up there and be a Rhodes scholar who can dissect a Chekhov narrative, debate criminal law policy in Angola or shed light on the latest findings in stem cell research. You just have to talk about you! And have you met you? You’re awesome, you rock! It’s easy to talk about you.
3. Less about the book, more about you!
Don’t use a library talk as a way to give a half hour run down of your book. The people there are either planning to read your book, have already read your book or have come for the free wine and cheese! Either way, they haven’t come to get the live audio version of your book.
They want to learn about YOU. So only talk about the book when you’re speaking of your connection with your book – things like how the characters formed themselves in your mind and how that felt for you when they came alive, which scene you love the best and why, whether you’ve been to the places in the book and had real life experiences similar to those in the story.
Give the people attending your talk a tour inside your writer’s mind from when you were writing it. That’s what makes you fascinating.
Saying, ‘My book titled________ is set in _________ in the year ________and it has the characters of ________ and __________ who ____________ and then they_____________’ has to be the dullest way to open a talk ever. You’re sharing nothing with your audience that they won’t discover for themselves when they read it, or worse, already know because they have read it.
4. Share stories about yourself that you’ve never shared publicly before.
I have done roughly 8.7 bazillion interviews about my journey to publication and the story behind LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT. At every talk I do, I have new people who are there because they go to all the author talks their library puts on. Often they have never heard of me before, so everything I say is a revelation to them. But there also always others who are die-hard fans that have sat on their laptops and soaked up every bit of information about me that has ever been released. Those people want to know something they haven’t seen in print interviews, read in blogs or heard me say on the radio. So I save some small piece of myself for every talk.
When you do this too, make it something personal, something that will make the people who made the effort to come and see you, feel that they share a special bond with you, because they're privy to information that isn’t widely available to everyone else online. This doesn’t have to be a shameful secret like, ‘I cheated on my fiancé.’ It can be anything from, ‘Nobody outside of this room apart from my husband knows this, but I ate a whole block of chocolate every single day while I was writing this book.’ Or, ‘You might not know this because I never revealed it in an interview, but I had actually chosen another title for the book before this one. My editor hated it so we changed it. My old title was….’
Anything you can say to let your audience feel that you trust them enough to reveal something especially for them that you haven’t revealed before, builds their trust in you and creates more rapport.
5. Talk about your life outside of being an author.
You are more than your author-self. Sharing more of yourself than just how you came to write presents you as a more well-rounded, relatable human being. Tell the audience about your past (briefly, not blow by blow!), or about your current living situation. Start your talk by sharing stuff about you that will orientate the audience to who you are as a person and where you fit in the world before they start hearing about your writing journey.
It can be as simple as,
‘I come from a large Irish family. I was the last of seven kids, so you know, I had to be loud to be heard and here I am thirty-years later, microphone in hand, still insisting on being heard. I live alone with my dog, Bjorn. He’s not named after Bjorn from ABBA or Bjorn from Wimbledon. No, he’s named after Bjorn Westerlund, the CEO of Nokia. Why are you laughing? What’s more important to you guys – be honest now - ABBA, Wimbledon or your mobile phone? Anyway, it was because of something I happened to see when I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone that planted the seed for the book….’
And then keep bringing in parts of your personal life into your speech as it goes on. Remember, your life and your experience is what makes you unique and adds personality to what would otherwise be just another talk about just another book by just another instantly forgettable author.
When I talk about the different stages of my writing journey, I say where I was at at that time in my life in general. Things such as, ‘At that stage my kids were seven and four years old.’ Or ‘That was the day before we had to leave for Europe.’
Dropping in little bits of information like that will have your audience leaving feeling that they got to know you and they will be ten times more likely to look out for future books by you. Why? I just told you why! Because they know you! Of course you’re more likely to look out for a book by someone you know over someone you don’t know, right?
6. Involve your audience in your talk!
My State Manager for HarperCollins, the wonderful Theresa Anns, gave me a pearl of wisdom while she helped my husband/roadie set up my banner to kick off the first talk of my tour in August last year. (While I stood by like the entitled brat that I am, watching and not offering to help!)
She said, ‘Don't forget to ask your audience questions.’
‘Eh?’ I replied.
‘Every five or ten minutes, ask them a question. Any question. It will keep the audience engaged and feeling like they’re an integral part of your talk.’
I wanted to slap that Theresa!
It was the very first talk on my tour, I had a huge roomful of complete strangers waiting for me to begin and I had memorised my entire speech, damn it! This was not the time to throw me a curveball like that! But when my manager, who had to take every HarperCollins author who lived in or visited Perth to every one of their talks for the last twenty years gave me advice, I knew better than to ignore it!
So I started the talk with a question. ‘Hi everyone, I’m guessing as my book was released this week, none of you has a clue in hell who I am and you all came along tonight for the wine and the supper. Am I right?’
Queue laughter, embarrassed nods. Bam! Instant audience rapport.
Clever, clever Theresa.
So even though I had my prepared speech written and memorised, that night I did what she said and every few minutes I threw in a question about whatever it was I was speaking about in that part of the speech. Questions like, ‘Who’s seen Twilight?’ or ‘Do you guys like Maltesers, you know the dark-choc coated ones?’ and ‘Hey who remembers that episode of Friends with Joey’s identical hand twin?’
See what I mean? ANY question will do. Questions keep the audience on their toes, making sure they listen because they know at any given moment you can look straight at them and ask them something. And the other thing is that people love sharing about themselves so they’ll want to connect with you more if they see that you’re interested in them – you want to know if they read your favourite book, you want to know what they think of Oprah.
Just make your questions non- confronting – I wouldn’t say, ‘Hands up if you bullied people at school,’ for example.
And make them answers that need a quick, one second response so that they don't interrupt the flow of your talk. A little rule I have is if they can answer 'yes, no or me,' then you’re on a winner with that question!
10 Practical tips to leave you with:
Don’t ask me how I know these things, alright? Just take my word for it…
- Take a water bottle and ignore the glass of water the librarian leaves for you. It's heaps harder to drool down your front with a bottle.
- Don’t stand behind a lectern in a strapless dress.
- If someone looks bored and is yawning, remember where they’re sitting and don’t look there again. Look for the ones who are smiling at you and direct your speech at them.
- Check for poppy seeds in your teeth before you speak.
- Wear flat shoes. Everyone else is sitting, you'll look tall enough anyway.
- Leave yourself twice the amount of time to get there as you think you’ll need. If you arrive early, that’s why Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube exist.
- If you’re doing a book signing at the end, clean your nails.
- As soon as you get home, check Facebook and quickly untag yourself from the photos of you looking like a lunatic with arms flailing and weird facial expressions taken looking straight up your double chin from the person sitting in the front row.
- Don’t imagine everyone naked. It doesn’t work and is actually a rather alarming visual to be honest if, like me, most of your audiences are little old ladies and little old men.
- If Channing Tatum is in your audience, by all means imagine him naked. I'm pretty sure that would help you forget your nerves nice and quickly.
I’ve spoken at so many libraries that I’ve lost count. Every time we thought it was over, my publicist emailed me with a new request from a librarian who had heard from another librarian that they should have me at their library.
To steal my friend Bec Sparrow’s words, I’m not a magical unicorn. There is nothing so amazing about me that would make my talks exceptional compared to other author talks. I’m not any smarter, funnier or more charming than the next author.
But what I do during my talks is that I give every audience a new and unique insight into who I really am. I hope your author talks bring you many moments to cherish. So go out there people, give great talks and steal my gigs!
Good luck xx