How Much is a Presentation Worth?
I’ve been asked to give a talk (which I can’t make public yet) and the organization that invited me asked me what my speaker fee is. I completely didn’t expect that. People usually pay me to shut up. How much is a few hours of my time and professional knowledge worth? What are typical speaker fees? I’m so clueless. I’ve given many presentations before, but always for free or in exchange for a meeting fee (like $25).
I need to come up with something better than “will stop talking about blogging for food.” I doubt I could eat my weight in frozen custard.
August 15th, 2004 at 10:07 pm
It really depends sort of what you need to be making, whether you are taking “professional development” time off from work to do this or if it’s on your own time, how experienced and polished you are as a speaker, and basically what level of hassle it will be. A lot of people speak at conferences for essentially free, so having reasonable speaker’s fees is a good way to offset the fact that everyone at ALA expects you to speak for free [in my case]. Also, if it’s a big reputation or resume builder, or gets your name out in a way you’d like it to be out, you can be flexible on expenses if the amount you ask for is a make or break deal. At some level either they have money for you in which case you should ask for something reasonable [and not underbid] or they have no money and will be passing the hat in which case you have to think long and hard about whether it’s worth it to you to work for very little cash.
My range is basically $100 plus expenses to broke Vermont librarians [and sometimes free for a pal or a very local concern] up to $400-500 for an hour or two talk plus slides plus research plus handouts. I up this a little bit every year, as I become a better speaker and my range of knowledge increases. People usually say this is too low. I always ask for modest travel expenses if I need to travel and often this can double my fees but often equals a free vacation someplace. I’m sure people willl have vastly differing responses, feel free to email if you’d like more dollar amounts for specific stuff.
August 15th, 2004 at 10:15 pm
Wow! Thanks so much for the info, Jessamyn! It’s incredibly helpful. They’re covering my travel expenses. We haven’t talked about the content of the program yet or how long I’ll speaking. It’s a good idea to do that before we settle on money, I suppose.
It’s such a contrast to the conferences I’ve spoken at and will be speaking at when I’ve had or will have to pay my own way. I didn’t expect it.