Debbie Elicksen’s Informative Interview

Written by dabney on Friday, January 13th, 2012 with 0 comments

Our next interview is with Debbie Elicksen, an expert in the field of publishing. Debbie has helped guide new and seasoned authors through the book publishing minefield from scratch to finish, also helping authors/publishers/businesses reach their market in the new media world. She has worked with people worldwide: hand-in-hand, through workshops and seminars, through her online resources, and her bestselling book “Self-Publishing 101.” She has personally authored, edited, ghosted, and project managed over 150 books, including ten of her own.

Debbie has been a professional sports writer, covering the National Hockey League for 20 years for several publications and sports services, including the The Fischler Report and nbcsports.com.

***

If you could tell one sentence to every prospective author out here, what would it be?

Writing is a business, not a lottery ticket.

You help people publish in both new and traditional media. If you could totally eliminate all but one media form so that everything had to be published in that medium, would you do it? Which media form would you pick?

That’s a no-brainer. Self-publishing in new media. You have to do that anyway if you want to be published and earn any money at it. Do the math. Do you want to give up 100 percent of your rights and control over everything to do with the process to a company that doesn’t market and only gives you 5 to 10 percent royalties? Or would you rather create a connection with your own readers and sell to them directly for 100 percent?

Whose book would you absolutely love to help publish?

Oh, gosh, that is a great question. Wow. So many, but if I had to narrow down the list: Michael Vick, Jarome Iginla, Cam Neely, Tony Gonzalez, Justin Trudeau, Nickelback, Conan O’Brien. Shall I go on?

In many ways, preparing a book for publication can be like preparing for a public speech. How have your skills as an expert publisher influenced your ability to speak publicly?

You are right about that. You need to outline both and figure out what the key points are, flush them out, and tell a story. The business of publishing has influenced my speaking because I do tend to teach people how to write and publish in workshops, and now I teach them how to make new media relevant to them and take the scary out of it. Plus today, much of the platform is blending, thanks to new media.

Describe your expertise as a publisher in two words, and your skills as a public speaker in two words. The catch? Don’t tell us what the words are describing. Let our readers guess which words apply to publishing, and which apply to public speaking.

Real meat; no nonsense

I understand you’re quite a fan of hockey. Is public speaking anything like hockey, or are these two interests of yours completely dissimilar?

I spent over 20 years as a freelance writer in the National Hockey League besides being a fan, so I got to see all sides of the game, and now I just write for the Hockey Canada Alumni Association. And yes, you can find similarities in both. Probably wrestling might be a more dramatic comparison, due to the showmanship required to engage an audience, but hockey is about preparation, practice, and working on the fundamentals. You’ll have games where you’re not 100 percent, and the audience might heckle you. In hockey, just because you lace up a pair of skates doesn’t mean you can jump right into the pros, or even major junior hockey. You need to work your way into the lineup through hard work and preparation. All those elements are in the speaking business, even the heckling.

What’s your biggest pet peeve about the world of publishing? What about Public Speaking?

Publishing: How much time do you have? The fact that the traditional industry is still operating analog—as if the Internet and New Media hasn’t happened (for one—there isn’t enough space to go into more) tops that list. Also the snakes that pass themselves off as helping people “self-publish” when they are really vanity print-on-demand firms that end up taking authors for a wallet ride for a substandard product.

Public speaking: When a speaker tries to get the audience to raise their hand every five minutes or more. It’s annoying and makes me want to get up and punch them. Also making assumptions about the audience that might not be true. For example, there was an author we brought in to speak to a group of independent publishers and all that speaker did was trash self-publishing. Umm, hello?

When you watch a public speaker, do you ever go into editor mode and mentally analyze all the things he’s doing right or wrong?

If they make me raise my hand every five minutes or assume something about me I’m not. But I can’t help it if they are talking about writing and publishing and if there are philosophical differences. But most certainly I have a difficult time reading a book without picking apart the layout. It is not against the law to use a font other than Times New Roman, turn off hyphenation, and move the widows to the paragraphs they belong in. I pick apart handouts, too, especially when there are spelling errors and misuse of capitals and punctuation.

What are your best and worst moments as a public speaker?

Junior high school classes are difficult for me to connect with. My comfort zone for youth is older adolescents (high school and university age), so MY perception when I was in front of junior high age was I bombed. Then in a high school class teaching my first new media keynote, I made the mistake of assuming they knew some of what I was talking about. It turned out they didn’t even know what a blog was, because the teachers don’t know or teach it and their parents don’t know or teach it. But that was a great learning experience.

I LOVE talking about new media and love it when I see the participants’ eyes light up when they see how they can apply it. The best times are when they nearly bolt out the door when I’m done—not because they want to get out of there but because they can’t wait to put the points into action.

What advice do you have for aspiring speakers?

Start with what you know and what you’re passionate about. That comes through to your audience. Try and get to know more about the audience and customize your talk. You can use a template, but customize it for each audience. Do the work off the stage and it pays off on the stage.

Work on your weaknesses (something all of us need to do all the time). If you have a soft voice, learn to project your voice. I went to broadcasting school many years back and there were some voice exercises that seemed really embarrassing and dumb, but they were great for helping with pronunciation.

Try and estimate how much time it will take you to get through your key points. Use a stop watch and practice at home if you need to. You don’t want to go over your allotted time.

Most speakers I know make their money with training and workshops, either booking their own sessions and marketing to the masses, or working with corporate clients. The glamour may be in the keynote, but the reality is for most, it’s a very small part of their work.

And for God’s sake, prepare for equipment meltdown, because it will. Your projector may not work, so ALWAYS print a hard copy of your presentation for yourself so you can seamlessly move on through the event as if it were just a hiccup. I was on a webinar where the speaker wasted 10 minutes of our time because he was so panicked that the slides wouldn’t work. You mean to tell me he didn’t think to print off a copy and have it beside him? Your Skype might not work and you may have to use a phone line. All these things are INEVITABLE. Deal with it. As soon as you grip and make it about the equipment failure, you have lost your audience. Move that back up to the pet peeves, too.