Bad Public Speaking Books

“If you want to be a successful speaker”, the experts say, “you’ve got to write a book.” As with most questionable advice, this pernicious bit of conventional wisdom is based in the truth.

It’s true that successful celebrity writers are always in demand as speakers and that they command high fees. Some best-selling writers even make more money from their speaking than they do from their writing.

It’s also true that, with the advent of ebook readers and print on demand (POD) presses, it has never been easier to write, publish and market a book. Social media platforms have made it possible for anyone to build a virtual tribe of followers. Amazon and Apple will handle your fulfillment and billing for you.

It’s a golden age of self-publishing………, and there are a lot of bad public speaking books out there.

Honestly, it’s not so much that they are bad, as that they are pointless. The majority of the speakers writing books are new to the field. They might have some natural talent as a speaker, but most of what they know they learned from other speakers.

As I read their books, all I can think of is, “That’s a Craig Valentine phrase”, “They stole that from Brian Tracy” or “That’s a Zig Ziglar story”. The rest is usually generic advice that we could get from any airline in-flight magazine, such as “be yourself”, “make eye contact” and “speak clearly”.

As marketing pieces, such books might seem impressive, if we overlook the often spotty editing and poor book and cover design, but it would be nice if the author had offered some original insights or ideas.

Otherwise, they’re just big business cards.