Appearances · Less obvious
Corporate speaking and after-dinners
The same craft, a different room: boards, conferences, and people who have a budget line for speakers.
Companies pay for talks about storytelling, creativity, communication, or whatever your book can be stretched to cover without snapping. After-dinner speaking is older than the literary festival and often better paid. You need a tight forty minutes, a clean point, and the willingness to be the entertainment. The book is your calling card; the invoice is for the hour.
- Typical pay
- From a few hundred for a local business breakfast to several thousand for a conference keynote. After-dinner fees, for people who can actually hold a room, sit well above most festival cheques.
- Ceiling
- Uncapped
- Speed
- First money in months
- Effort
- A real extra job
- Needs
- Needs a name
How it works
- 01
A speaker bureau, or a direct enquiry, books you for a slot with a brief: topic, length, audience, travel.
- 02
You deliver a talk that was not your festival talk with the jokes swapped. Or, if you are clever, it was, and nobody minds.
- 03
You invoice, often via the bureau, who will take a commission.
How to start
- 01
Write down, in one sentence, what a room of non-readers would hire you to tell them. If you cannot, this is not your stream yet.
- 02
A short showreel or a crisp one-pager does more than a literary CV.
- 03
Start with chambers of commerce, alumni dinners, and conferences in the world your non-fiction already addresses.
Watch out
- 01
Bureaux take 20–30%. Direct clients are nicer on the margin and harder to find.
- 02
A 'we might buy a thousand copies' promise is not a fee. Get the fee.
- 03
Do not agree to a panel instead of a keynote if the keynote was what you quoted for.
Businesses have budgets. Festivals have volunteers. I am fond of both, but only one of them regularly pays in four figures for an hour of the same voice I use in a bookshop. If your work has a point that survives contact with people who do not read reviews, this door is open.