The Author Desk is a free newsletter for nonfiction business authors, including coaches, consultants, speakers and fractional executives who want their book to bring in clients. Every 7 to 14 days, Elizabeth Javor takes one thing she checks on every book that comes to her desk and shows you how to check it on your own. She has worked in publishing and book marketing since 2007.
Did someone offer to get you a TEDx talk?
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THIS ISSUE Nobody can sell you a TEDx spotSomebody emails you about a TEDx talk. They know an organizer, a spot is opening up, and there's a fee that covers coaching and the stage. TED's own page on how TEDx speakers get chosen answers that offer directly. Go and find that email, and look for the number. TED's rules for the people who run these events say that TEDx events "may neither pay nor charge speakers." On its page for speakers, TED is blunter. Any fee-based "TEDx service" is illegitimate, "using the community's name without permission." TED also publishes what happens next. Wherever transactions around presenting on a TEDx stage are discovered, related talks become ineligible for publication. The talk is the video. An author wants the stage because of the video, and paying for the stage is what costs them the video. A real spot doesn't come through an intermediary. Each event is curated independently by volunteers under a free license from TED, and TED says those volunteers select every speaker without influence from sponsors, government or any organizations. Some teams publish an application form and some don't, and TED's instruction to anyone proposing a speaker is to approach only the teams that do. There is nothing standing between you and a volunteer deciding about an idea, which is why there is nothing for anyone to sell you. A TEDx speaker also cannot promote their own products, books or businesses from the stage, or those of a company that employs them. TED allows a book in a talk on one condition, which is that the book informs an idea presented in it. Your book can be where the idea came from. It cannot be the point of the talk. What a TEDx talk gives an author is a recording of them explaining one idea well, under a name people recognize, that they can put in front of a client or a booker for years. If a service is charging for a TEDx speaking spot, TED asks you to report it to tedx@ted.com, which is on that same speakers page. What gets an author chosen is the idea, and the idea is yours. What an organizer reads before deciding whether to take that idea seriously is a different question, and the answer is the same whether the stage is a TEDx event, a conference or a podcast. FROM THE INDUSTRY Australia may legalize AI training on your books The Authors Guild reported on October 22 that the Australian government plans to introduce legislation allowing AI companies to use authors' work to train their models without a license, with an opt-out for copyright owners. It would apply to authors anywhere, including the United States. The Guild is collecting signatures on a statement opposing it. Authors Guild Best regards, Elizabeth Website · Substack · LinkedIn · Instagram · Facebook 600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246 You've elected to receive emails from The Book Marketing Source. Unsubscribe |
The Author Desk by The Book Marketing Source
The Author Desk is a free newsletter for nonfiction business authors, including coaches, consultants, speakers and fractional executives who want their book to bring in clients. Every 7 to 14 days, Elizabeth Javor takes one thing she checks on every book that comes to her desk and shows you how to check it on your own. She has worked in publishing and book marketing since 2007.
THIS ISSUE Your audiobook may already be in Kindle+ On October 22, Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+ and added audiobooks for subscribers in the US. Subscribers can now read a book, listen to it or do both at no extra cost. Listening is paid the same way reading is now, by page, out of the KDP Select Global Fund, and KDP says it's adding money to that fund to cover listening. Some audiobooks went in with no new action from their authors. If you made an audiobook with KDP's virtual...
THIS ISSUE Who sees your Featured section Open a private browser window, search for your own name, and click through to your LinkedIn profile. Look at what's there. Then sign in and look at the same profile again. The first time through, your Featured section is missing. LinkedIn's help pages say that to view someone's Featured content, "the viewer must have a LinkedIn account and must be logged in." Anyone who reads your profile without signing in won't see anything you've featured,...
THIS ISSUE You'd never know it happened Somebody read your book last month, looked for the thing you offered at the back, and never found it. You have no idea it happened. There's no bounce report for a paperback. Three things go wrong back there. Here they are in the order they're most likely happening to you. The first one only exists in print. In Kindle, your link is live, and a reader taps it. On paper, it's a string of characters somebody has to copy out by hand onto a phone while...