From Stages to Pages: Why Speakers Need a Book to Build Their Career

As an aspiring or established speaker, writing your thoughts down in an organized manner is probably not new to you. The jump to taking those thoughts and expanding them into book format isn’t a huge leap at all. In fact, it is the natural progression to propel your message, from stages to pages! If you haven’t given much thought to creating a book based around your speaking content, it’s an idea worth considering. Here are a few reasons why a book can build a speaker’s career.

Building a connection

As a speaker, you want your words to be sticky and stay with the audience. But who among us hasn’t fallen prone to ‘out of sight, out of mind’? A book will keep your words and passion center stage with your audience, connecting with them long after the presentation.

The connection you build could translate to enthusiastic fans. The kind of fans that will eagerly spread the word about your message. A book is the connective tissue to the hearts and minds of the audience, and it provides a way to market yourself well after you step out of the spotlight.

Building buzz and influence

Books are a handy tool for the social media-savvy speaker to connect with current and potential fans. Constructing a digital campaign around a book launch, quotes from the book, or reviews, is an ideal opportunity to create buzz for a speaker.

Speakers can generate buzz by promoting a book as part of their marketing. It offers a platform to generate word of mouth about you. Your audience can tell the tales of your presentation but also having a book to refer to increases your influence and reach. When you have influence, people pay attention.

A book also bolsters your reputation as a subject matter expert with clout and someone with a compelling message. Those printed pages give you a unique edge, a means to stand out in a crowded speaking field.

Building content

If you struggle to keep your presentations fresh or, at the other end of the spectrum, too many ideas in your mental queue, then a book is a great way to spark ideas or distribute your excess content. All the ideas you have jotted down on scraps of paper or neatly typed into your computer are all ripe as a baseline for constructing your book. Pull a chapter or two and expound on it for your next engagement. Let your talk be the teaser for your book!

You already have the content. A book is an easy next step to build your career through connecting with your audience, creating buzz and influence, and increasing the impact and reach of your content. So, let’s get started! After all, doesn’t ‘speaker AND author’ have a nice ring to it?

Kristen White is a Content Catalyst and Powerful Interviewer. She can quickly add the crisp clarity, magic dust and unique brand elements to any message, book, product or campaign.

Through her award-winning interview skills, Kristen will excavate and synthesize a personal story and legacy into a magnetic brand and content strategy. Her strong intuitive insight, journalistic training and versatile wordsmithing, offer clients a wellspring of fingerprint language options to apply to all levels of their written, spoken and video communication. Kristen is a bestselling author, award-winning documentary film director and cast member, television series creator/writer, and television on-camera journalist. As the CEO of Rock the Stage, Page, and Screen™, a digital media and marketing company, Kristen supports clients with unique personal brand development, speech writing and performance, book concepts, titles, outlines and marketing, and online business consulting.

Rock the Stage, INC, offers professional video production for authors, speakers and coaches with a variety of speaking topics.  The company also offers speechwriting, broadcast-quality lifestyle video interviews and fast-track book publishing via an on-camera interview.