How I Got My First Speaking Gig And What Every Writer Can Learn From It

I never planned on giving a public lecture. How it came to this anyway, you can read in this article.

In 2017 I had already published eighteen novels as a self-publisher and made good money from it. But before I could quit my day job, it should take until the end of 2018.

I had put several books in the Amazon Top 100 Charts in Germany, and at that time, I was pretty sure that things like my homepage or a blog were not very important for me as an author.

Of course, I had a homepage and a blog integrated into it. But the site had no priority for me. It had almost no organic traffic. My readers didn’t find me via this site.

I put my trust in social media and especially in the Kindle shop. I used all my energy to be found directly at Amazon by my readers.

I still follow this strategy today. I still think that as a thriller author, I don’t win new readers by running a small blog.

But then, in 2017, it turned out that I had completely underestimated the potential of blogging when it wasn’t just about finding new readers and selling books.

An experiment and a blog post

It all started when one day, I offered volume 1 of my thriller series for free on Amazon for five days. I hoped to make the book a little more visible in the Kindle shop. But I didn’t expect it to be a big success.

It was planned as a small marketing campaign.

Due to some favorable circumstances, good timing, and the right advertising activities, the campaign became an enormous success, and the whole series gained a lot of visibility. My sales increased this month.

I was so impressed by this result that I wanted to tell other authors about it but didn’t know how.

Then I had the idea to write a blog post on my homepage. My homepage had already started to gather dust, but it was the only place where I could publish an article. Then I could share the report through my social media channels.

So I went to work. Based on my experiences with this successful free campaign, I analyzed the reasons that led to this success and developed a guide for authors.

This guide was intended to help decide whether an Autot with a particular book should do a free promotion or not.

The article was written within two hours and published on my homepage. Then I shared the link on Facebook and Twitter, got some encouraging reactions, and soon forgot about it again.

The article was far from viral. But that wasn’t my goal either. I just wanted to share my experience with those who were interested.

Surprising development

A few weeks later, I got an e-mail. It was written by an author whom I had known for a long time via Facebook, but with whom I had little contact until then, that he had read my article.

Since he organized a meeting of the industry in my hometown Hamburg in summer — the Self-Publishing-Day — he was looking for speakers for this event.

He found the topic of free promotions so compelling that he offered me the opportunity to give a twenty-minute lecture on this topic at this event.

Also, I was to be interviewed, together with two of the most successful German self-publishers from my genre, about my work as an author in front of a broad audience.

I didn’t think for five minutes and agreed.

I had never talked publicly before, had never been to such an event, and didn’t know if the audience there wanted to hear me at all. I hadn’t asked for a fee either. I assumed that I would speak there for free. After all, I got free admission to an event for which the visitors paid over 200 €.

The next day I set to work and designed a lecture based on my article.

I knew that I had to bring my presentation with me on a USB stick and create it as a PowerPoint presentation. Unfortunately, I had never worked with Powerpoint before, and I didn’t know how to plan a presentation to actually last twenty minutes in the end, not ten minutes or half an hour.

Preparing for the big day

I asked my wife to show me the essential functions of PowerPoint. Then I structured my article so that I could give a talk about it.

Then I created the slides for the presentation. I took care to have as little text as possible in the presentation, but easy to understand graphics and the most important numbers.

In an additional document, I wrote down keywords for each slide so that during the presentation, I would always know what to say when the next slide was due.

When the first draft was ready, I once held the entire presentation for myself and stopped the time. It turned out that I was finished way too quickly.

I returned to the draft and added additional points and examples. After about five runs, I had a presentation that filled twenty minutes of speaking time and contained all the information I thought was important.

I then sent the finished presentation to the host. After two days, he contacted me and wrote that he liked the presentation and that I could present it at the event.

In the weeks until it finally happened, I practiced my presentation again and again in front of the mirror. I also recorded my voice to hear how I sound.

I practiced until I knew the whole presentation by heart because I was afraid that I might lose my notes on the day of the event. So, in short, I was very nervous.

The speech

Over two hundred guests came to the event in the hotel in Hamburg. Conference rooms were rented, and stands were set up.

Service providers were there to present their services, the German Self Publisher Association was present, and I met a lot of colleagues for the first time in real life, instead of just on Facebook.

Then soon, my gig began. I went forward, stood behind the podium, and picked up the microphone. I looked into the audience, and the hall was completely filled. My hope that only a few spectators would get lost in my lecture had not been fulfilled.

But the presenter did a good job, introduced me to the audience and gave me a good feeling. My nervousness disappeared, and I started my presentation.

In between, I cursed myself briefly for not having taken any water with me to the desk because, after just ten minutes, my mouth became so dry that it was difficult to speak.

But I somehow mastered this problem too, and in the end, I not only got a lot of applause for my lecture, but there were also numerous questions from the audience. I gladly answered all questions, because many of those present were inexperienced authors, whom I happily helped with my knowledge.

This was followed by a joint interview with my two colleagues, both of whom are much more successful than me. Nevertheless, I felt very comfortable in the discussion, and the questions were so good and funny that it was a pleasure to answer them.

Afterward, I went with the other two authors to the lobby, where we met some more. Spontaneously we decided to go to the city center in the evening and eat together.

On that occasion, I also learned from the organizer that I should get 200€. I didn’t expect that, but of course, I was thrilled.

So the day was a complete success for me. I had given my first public lecture, got to know many interesting people, and in the end, even earned money.

What you can learn from it

We authors interact with an invisible audience. When we write something and then publish it, we don’t know beforehand who will read our work.

If we don’t limit our work to just publishing our books, writing can even give us completely unexpected opportunities.

In my case, a blog post about a marketing campaign has led to such an unexpected opportunity. A single article read by the right person can lead a career in entirely new areas.

So if you think whether you should blog as a fiction writer, the answer from my point of view is yes. It is not vital that you run a big blog with a lot of traffic. But you need a place where you can publish things that are not supposed to be in your books.

You never know if you won’t miss an opportunity if you don’t.

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