A book is your golden ticket into the speaking business. If you had a book published within the last 12 months in your hands, you have the calling card you need to get those speaking engagements now.

Some authors-to-be and new authors have trouble figuring out precisely how to leverage that book into speaking. First, when the book is printed, ask the publisher for a few hundred copies of the cover, as "overrun." Usually you can have them free or at cost. They make large-sized, noticeable postcards to send to meeting planners to attract their attention.

Next, you want to get media. Radio, print, television appearances based on your book are all critical. Capture the name of the show, the host and the date you appeared and put it on your website, in your speaker's package, and in your file. Eventually, you will collect all of your TV clips and ask a professional video editor to combine it into an excellent montage. These will impress the heck out of a meeting planner and should be used liberally.

Now that you've got some ammo, and assuming you have a website touting your brilliance and your book, it's time to petition all those hapless meeting planners out there. Write letters, make phone calls, send post cards, follow up and be persistent.

You can buy a book of meeting planners in any industry online. Then, you make them your new friends. Go to their meetings. Hang out. Cold call them and be friendly.

I personally love cold calling. I also don't even notice rejection. I suggest you adopt my personality for a little while each day. In the speaker trainings I do, I make them all recite a mantra that will help their business: "The most important thing that I can do is make 12 calls between 10 and 2." That refers to the minimum I expect from a speaker-to-be. Make 12 calls each day to meeting planners, offer them you, a free copy of your book, send them a postcard thanking them for their time on the phone written on your book jacket cover, and make at least three follow up calls (or fewer if they tell you to quit calling.)

Make those 12 calls five days a week. Give them what they ask you for. If you do this, you will make 3,120 calls in a year. You will have gotten speaking engagements simply by the law of averages. Your investment of time will be small, but results can be huge.

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Wendy Keller is a professional speaker, consultant and published author. Her company Keller Media, Inc. helps published authors become successful, paid speakers. For information on her Beginning Speaking Program visit http://www.kellermedia.com/seminar_detail.aspx?id=2&iid=3