Is Anyone Listening? Public speaking as a (sneaky) way to sell your book

I’ve been reading Rob Eagar’s Sell Your Book like Wildfire, and one of his chapters is all about how valuable public speaking opportunities are—both for your book sales and for your career as a writer.  He was very persuasive!  Unfortunately, most of the speaking opportunities he described are related to nonfiction books.

You see, the whole reason someone will book you as a speaker is because you can provide value.  Talking about the fact that you just published a book, and isn’t that great!, and you should buy it!—that’s not value.

It’s easy to see why nonfiction authors can demonstrate value.  Maybe they’ve written a self-help book, and they can teach the audience some of the lessons included in the book.  Maybe they’re a relationship coach, and they can help people with their struggling relationships.  Or maybe they’re a food writer who can give a cooking demo.

Fiction authors have a much harder time with this.  I was completely stumped, until recently.  The Natural Order is a YA novel, so it’s aimed at middle school and high school students.  What on earth could I talk about that would interest them?

Then my partner and I got to talking. 

We’re hoping someday to do the Te Araroa, which is a hike that runs the length of New Zealand, and while we’re hiking, he wants to stop at schools along the way and give wilderness first-aid talks to the kids.  See, we’re both big hikers, and on top of a paramedic and nursing degree, he used to be part of the ski patrol in Montana.  Plus, he was a firefighter.

Kids love that sort of thing.

As it turns out, The Natural Order is set in the Canadian wilderness, and the characters occasionally have to survive disasters of their own—the same sort of things you would talk about in a wilderness first-aid class.  Things like avalanches (especially a problem in New Zealand, with the extremely steep mountains!), hypothermia, and getting lost in the woods.

My partner could do a wilderness first-aid talk for middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, and reference The Natural Order for examples of situations that you could find yourself in while hiking in the woods!

Perfect.  It’s useful for teachers, fun for kids, and not obviously a sales ploy.

We’ll give it a try in mid-June (it’s winter here in New Zealand, so they won’t be on summer break), shortly after the book has been released, and see if it generates any results!