Effective Strategies on Giving Book Talks

One effective way I've found for spreading the word of my books around and selling them is to give talks at various  events and clubs.  When I first started doing this I tried having events just for my books, such as a signing at a bookstore, or at a library.  I got spoiled because it went well the first time I did it.  This was, however, a fluke.  I happened to have written about a subject that occurred in the town where I was speaking, so I had a huge turnout.  But after that, you could hear crickets chirping as I sat and waited in a bookstore for someone to give a crap.

What turned out to work much better was to find groups that were already meeting on a regular basis and who were looking for guests to speak.  Rotaries are a perfect example of this, because they meet every week, and most of them need a new guest speaker every single time.  That's a lot of slots to fill, so authors are helping them out by offering to speak, as long as it's on a topic their members are interested in hearing.

The first few times I did this, I was very nervous.  However, it became easy for me once I understood what I really needed to do; just tell the story.

You typically have only 20 minutes.  That's enough time to just tell everyone the basics of your book.  This may seem like you're giving it away and they won't want to buy it afterwards, but the trick is to not tell them any major spoilers, and to give them broad strokes.  In the case of Two Gun Hart, I'm telling the story of a man's entire life.  By giving the broad strokes of what happened, I'm basically providing a trailer for each part of his life.  By the time I'm done, the listeners feel that they've been told an entertaining story, and they get the book to fill in all the details.

This style works particularly well with nonfiction.  With fiction, it's a bit more difficult.  First of all, Rotaries are less interested in fiction.  Most of the members are interested in hearing true stories.  However, they're also interested in hearing about true facts.  If you find some that are related to your book, you can give a talk on that.  For instance, when I give talks regarding my novel The American Game, I talk about the true history of baseball, and how it coincided with the Civil War.  I then end by explaining how I integrated this history into my book.

All these methods have gone over well with attendees, and have often gotten a good number of my books sold, and the word spread about them.

My Book Tour Through The Midwest

I recently returned from a book tour I took through the several states in the center of the country.  They included Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas.

I was mostly speaking at Rotaries, which I've quickly learned are the best resource for public speaking about my nonfiction books.  Rotaries need new speakers every week, so they are often happy to hear from an author who has an interesting story to tell.  It's as helpful for them as it is helpful for the author.

I knew I would be traveling to Nebraska for a few weeks, so I wanted to fill my schedule as much as possible to make the trip worthwhile.  I also knew I would be going down to Texas for the Alamo City Comic Convention, so I filled as much time there as possible.

I started by going to the Rotary Club Finder: https://www.rotary.org/en/search/club-finder

Here you can enter the region and get a list of all the rotaries in that area.  I got their email addresses and wrote to all of them, telling them a quick summary of Two Gun Hart, including the website for the book, and saying when I'll be in the area and that I would like to speak at their club.  I also found the local libraries and made a similar offer.  From the responses I was able to make a schedule of appearances.  There would be 12 in all, 10 rotaries and 2 libraries, plus the convention, which is a different subject because that involves my book series Relic Worlds.

I stayed with my family in Lincoln, Nebraska and set out from there to speak in Omaha, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri.  At these events a little under half of the people bought books, and there were usually about 15 to 20 attendees, so it was decent amounts of money.  In Texas it was hit or miss, either only one or two bought, or almost everyone bought.  Ultimately it turned out to be about the same number.

Basically, the conclusion I came to was that the sales were decent, but when you took into account the amount of time I spent arranging the talks, the flights, the car rental and gas, at best I came close to breaking even.  These were really talks to spread the word.  The problem with this is it's hard to measure it's effectiveness.  Worst of all, people forget things you told them after they leave.

So the best suggestion came from my uncle in Texas who said I should have flyers or bookmarks made up that say the name of this book and other books.  The people who bought books get to see there are others to purchase online, and those who did not buy get flyers to take with them to remind them where to buy them later.

I wish I had thought of that before, but I'll have it in mind now in future events.