Yes, writing a book can get you paid speaking gigs, and the numbers back it up. In one study, 72% of business authors landed speaking gigs after publishing, and keynote fees with a published book can reach $20K to $50K. But the book doesn’t do that on its own. It works when you plan it for the stage from the start and then put it in front of the people who book speakers.
This works for any nonfiction book you write to grow your business, whatever the topic. A grief counselor, a sleep coach, and a restaurant consultant can each write a book that gets them on stages, as long as the book is planned for it. Event organizers book speakers on every one of those topics.
I sat down with Megan Kachigan on the Values First Marketing podcast to talk books, data, and long-term marketing assets. We went deep on the topic of this post, and also covered soo many other elements of a book as part of your values-first marketing, so give it a listen. The best 24 minutes you’ll spend today.
Listen to the Podcast Episode on The Values First Marketing Podcast with Megan Kachigan ⤵️
Can Writing a Book Get You Paid Speaking Gigs?
Speaking is one of the most common results of publishing a book. In the Grammar Factory study of entrepreneurs who published a book:
- 72% landed speaking gigs after their book came out.
- 33% were paid for those gigs.
- 63% were featured in online media, which gives event organizers more ways to find you.
The drop from 72% to 33% is the part I care about, because getting invited and getting paid are two separate steps. Getting paid depends on how you plan and use the book, and that’s what the rest of this post covers.
The broader numbers point the same way. Among entrepreneurs who write a business book, 96% say it had a significant positive impact on their business. In the same research, 87% say publishing let them charge higher fees and attract more desirable clients, and speaking fees are part of that.
When an event organizer is choosing between two speakers on the same topic, the one who wrote the book on it is the easier choice to defend to their boss, their sponsors, and their audience. A book moves you from “seems credible” to “literally wrote the book on this,” which no speaker reel or website can do by itself.
I see this from both sides. I speak at summits and on podcasts, and I book guests for my own podcast and events, and the person who wrote the book on a topic is the easiest yes for me too.
So if you want to be booked more often and paid more when you are, a book is one of the most useful things you can build. It gives you a framework to build your talks on and a takeaway for every audience.
And you don’t need a bestseller for any of this. An Amazon bestseller badge does very little for your speaking career. The Amazon bestseller tag is easy to manufacture (it takes an afternoon), and almost no one hiring speakers checks Amazon rankings. Bigger bestseller lists aren’t a reliable signal either. The New York Times list isn’t strictly based on sales, and a book can debut at #1 while selling fewer copies than books ranked below it.
Event organizers and speaking bureaus are looking at other things. They want to see authority, a specific topic, and a point of view worth putting on their stage. A book with a clear message that readers finish and talk about does more for your speaking career than a badge from one launch day.
So if you’re deciding where to put your energy, I’d put it into the book’s message and structure first. The badge can be a nice extra, but it won’t be what gets you booked.
How Much More Do Speakers Get Paid with a Book?
The Speaker Lab lists these ranges:
- Speaking fees with a published book can reach $20K to $50K per keynote.
- Without a book, the typical range is $500 to $1K.
- Brand-new speakers usually earn $500 to $5,000 per talk.
- A full-time professional speaker can earn $50K to $300K or more a year.
That’s the range across the industry, so your own fees will depend on your topic, your audience, and how much speaking you’ve already done. The book still raises what organizers expect to pay you, because it signals depth and commitment that event organizers and speaking bureaus take seriously.
The money also comes from more places than the stage. For a typical nonfiction book, less than 20% of what the book earns comes from royalties. Most of it comes from the work the book brings you, and speaking fees are one of the biggest pieces. Among business authors who earn $10K or more from their book, 63% of that money comes from sources other than book sales.
How a Book Helps You Go from Free Talks to Paid Keynotes
A lot of speakers start with free talks at local groups, chambers, and meetups. Those talks are good practice, and they can bring in clients, but they rarely turn into paid stages on their own. So if that’s where you are right now, you’re not behind. That’s where my health coach client started, too.
A book changes the conversation you’re having with event organizers. Now you’re pitching yourself as the author of a book on the topic their audience needs, and your talk comes from that book. That gives the organizer a reason to pay you and a reason to say yes faster.
My health coach client is a good example. Before her book, she was pitching event organizers again and again and getting ghosted. Her talks were already good, and after she published, organizers outside her area had a reason to find her, trust her, and pay her, so she started booking four-figure gigs around the country.
The bookings can start within weeks of your launch, and they often build over the first several months. My client who landed a $20,000 keynote booked it within weeks of her book launch. For my health coach client, six months after publishing, organizers were reaching out to her first.
And the timeline depends on what you do with the book after it comes out, which is good news, because that part is in your control. The steps later in this post are the ones that put your book in front of the people who book speakers.
A book keeps doing this work for years. Across the book industry, about 70% of all book sales are backlist, meaning books that have been out for more than a year, so organizers can keep finding your book long after launch week.
How to Plan a Book When Speaking Is Your Main Goal
Before you outline anything or write chapter one, decide what you want the book to do for your business. It’s the first question I ask every client, and it changes the book more than any other decision.
Some authors want high-ticket clients. Some want to speak, sometimes internationally and without filling a one-on-one practice at all. Some want to sell digital products, and some want to be the name that comes up every time their topic is mentioned. Each of those goals calls for a different book, with different framing, different content, and a different publishing plan.
I call these goals Strategy Stacks, and one of them is the Sought-After Speaker Stack. A book planned for speaking is built so its big ideas can be taught from a stage:
- Its framework is easy to remember.
- Its message fits in a talk title.
- Its chapters give you material for more than one keynote.
A book built to fill a coaching program is structured differently than a book built to land $20K keynotes, so deciding your goal first saves you from rewriting later. And you can still get clients from a speaking book. The stage just comes first in how the book is built.
How to Write a Book That Gets You Booked to Speak
The book that gets you booked is the book people finish. The average nonfiction book has an 18% completion rate, which means 82% of readers stop before the end. Books built on my Heroine’s Journey for Damn Good Books™ can reach completion rates of up to 90%.
That matters for speaking because the people who book speakers are readers too. An event organizer who finishes your book and feels changed by it is the one who brings you in to do the same thing for their audience.
The Heroine’s Journey makes the reader the main character of your book. Every chapter, framework, and story is built so the reader feels like they’re the one moving forward.
The way it does that is through Purpose Points, which are specific moments in each chapter that tie the teaching to an emotional beat. Research shows facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered when they’re part of a story, so Purpose Points help your ideas stick long after the reader closes the book.
Those same moments become the stories you tell from the stage. Stories also release oxytocin in the brain, which is tied to trust and connection, so an audience that hears your stories from the stage leaves feeling like they know you.
This is the structure I teach in Damn Good Book™, my 90-day book-writing sprint. You leave with a fully mapped outline, with each chapter’s Purpose Point and Heroine’s Journey moment in place before you write the body of the book.
You also don’t have to give up your evenings for a year to get it done. My clients write their books in about 6 to 12 weeks, in time they already have, like the drive to a speaking gig.
How to Use Your Book to Get Paid Speaking Gigs
Once the book exists, it has to reach the people who book speakers. These are the steps that put it there. You don’t have to do all seven at once. Start with the first two, and add the rest as the bookings come in.
- Lead your speaker bio and one-sheet with “author of [your book title].” Event organizers skim dozens of speaker bios, so put the book in the first line where they’ll see it. It tells them right away that you have depth on the topic, and it gives them an easy way to introduce you to their audience. This works before launch day, too, as “author of the forthcoming [your book title].”
- Turn one to three chapters into signature talks. Pick the chapters that hold your strongest ideas and build a keynote around each one. That gives you a short menu of talks to pitch, and every talk sends the audience back to the book for the rest of the story. If you’re worried that teaching your book from the stage gives too much away, I go into that in Will Writing a Book Cannibalize My Business?
- Send the book with your pitch to event organizers. A physical copy stands out in a stack of emails. Bookmark a chapter or highlight a passage that shows exactly what you’d teach their audience, so the organizer can read the part that matters to them in a few minutes.
- Offer books for the audience as part of your speaking package. When the organizer orders a copy for every attendee, each person leaves with your book in hand. The organizer gets a takeaway for their audience, and you get readers who already heard you speak.
- Build your keynote on the same framework as your book. When the talk and the book teach the same framework, the talk makes people want the book and the book makes people want to bring you in to speak. Each one keeps the other working.
- Put a reader bonus or quiz link in both the book and the talk. This gives readers and audience members a reason to join your email list, so you can stay in touch with them after the event ends.
- Ask readers who belong to associations or conferences to recommend you. Many speaking gigs come from a member suggesting a speaker to their event planner. A reader who loved your book is the person most likely to make that suggestion.
My client who secured a $20,000 keynote got there in two steps: the book gave her the authority to be considered, and putting it in front of the right people got her the booking.
Why Plan Your Speaking Book with Me?
I’ve worked on books since 2014 and coached nonfiction authors since 2018. The authors I’ve watched get booked had books that were planned for the stage before they wrote a word, and that planning is the part I help with. We plan these books for two readers at once: the person in the audience and the person who books you, because both of them have to say yes.
Before my clients start writing, we decide:
- Which talk the book is built around, and which chapters can become your other keynotes.
- Who books speakers on your topic, so the book speaks to the audiences they’re booking for.
- How much of your method goes in the book and the talk, and what stays in your paid work, so you never have to worry about giving too much away.
My health coach client went from getting ghosted by event organizers to having them reach out to her first, and my client with the $20,000 keynote booked it within weeks of her launch. Both books were planned for the stage before they were written. A book planned this way also makes your talks easier to write, because the framework and the stories are already in the book.
The hardest calls depend on your business, like which talk to build the book around. Bring those to the Book Bestie™ Hotline. Send me your question in Voxer, by voice or text, and you get a real answer from me about your book within 72 business hours. Check the Hotline page for current pricing.
If speaking is on your list, the first step is knowing which Strategy Stack fits you, because that decides how your book should be built. Take the $100K Book Strategy Quiz to find your Stack and see what kind of book will get you where you want to go.
Take the $100K Book Strategy Quiz
PS If you want to hear more about books as a long-term marketing asset, listen to the full podcast episode here.
Your nonfiction book bestie
Hi, I’m Holly.
I’m Holly Ostrout, a nonfiction book and publishing coach. I’ve worked on books since 2014 and coached nonfiction authors since 2018. I help entrepreneurs (mostly women) write one Damn Good Book™ that brings in clients, lands speaking gigs, and makes their business simpler, smarter, and more visible.
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