CALL ME A DIVA: KELI'S CONTROVERSIAL RULES FOR EVENTS
I'm feeling unusually brave today. The truth is, I care - a lot - about what people think of me. I mean, during a random conversation with ChatGpt about website meta titles, I found myself wondering if the AI robot liked my personality (spoiler: it doesn't care about anyone's personalities; I asked it.) So under normal circumstances I wouldn't write a blog post like this, baring the fact that I have some controversial rules before agreeing to do event appearances as an author. I'd hate to be called a diva. But you know what - today I'm brave, so call me a diva if that's what it means to have standards and boundaries that protect my expertise, time, and finances.
I grew up like all girls do... thinking I had to be pleasant, obliging, and a sweetheart to work with. If you ever said no, asked too many questions, or negotiated something in return - you were seen as a difficult kind of girl. As a newcomer to the literary industry, I didn't want to be seen as difficult to work with, right off the bat.
I used to think you had to be someone important to have very high standards.
This led me to saying yes to a lot of misaligned event appearances as an author, earlier on. I didn't feel established enough to turn things down, to ask for compensation for my presence, to lay firm boundaries. It was only after years of dragging myself to every event, interview, and guest talk I had been invited to, and being treated poorly at most of them, that I realized something important:
Not every offer is an opportunity.
An opportunity, by definition is a chance to do something you really want to do. And what I really want to do is reach adult readers of high brow contemporary fiction, inspire hopeful authors to take a chance on themselves, and gather movement for my publishing company called The KREST House. The truth, I realized, is that majority of these events weren't doorways to doing this. It cost me travel money to hop all over the country, precious time to do long podcast interviews, my expertise to give knowledgeable speeches for free. It was quite literally draining my resources to keep saying yes to every misaligned offer that came my way. These weren't opportunities for me at all, but just things that sucked my money, my time, my expertise with nothing in return. My impossibly high standards came about when I read a quote in a book - and I wish I could remember what book it was:
At some point it becomes more important what you say 'no' to than what you say 'yes' to.
From then on, I decided to say no to offers that weren't mutually reciprocal in helping me achieve my goals. It wasn't about being demanding and difficult - a diva, if you will - but about protecting my resources from being plundered, while still giving of myself where I could. Here are the personal rules I have for myself when deciding whether to take up a public appearance offer or not:
1. I don't do school events.
I still feel a lot of guilt around this one, because elders (not that I'm terribly old; I'm turning 32 next month) are supposed to be role models for children. We're supposed to be inspiring to them. And we're supposed to be selfless when it comes to anything children ask us. Maybe it's the female struggle in me again, but I feel great shame about myself every time I get asked to do a talk for school going children, and inevitably have to say no. Good women don't turn down children, the world says.
But the truth is, my work is not suitable for children at all. The 400 series (currently consisting of The Four Hundred Club and Splitting an Empire) is high brow contemporary fiction revolving around the lives of wealthy circles, and aimed at the 18 - 35 target market (called new adults). Creating Literary Art, my non-fiction guide on how to write a perfectly publishable book, is aimed at mature writers with commercial goals. My publishing company, The KREST House, only signs on adult authors. Even my personal story - the now infamous story about Keli H, who quit her job as a doctor to follow her love for books - is beyond the comprehension of a child who hasn't yet experienced career disillusionment. Children won't genuinely benefit from me doing a guest talk with them. And in turn, nor will I gain readers, clients for KREST, or the satisfaction of deep discourse from it.
I have, however, done guest talks with teachers, and this I loved. I would gladly say yes to a school event where the target audience is the teachers, but it is only right for both parties for me to turn down anything involving the children.
2. I need to be compensated for my time.
I used to think I had great audacity for saying this. Who do I think I am, to say this? I'm not famous (yet!) and I'm not a global authority figure on the topic of storytelling (again - yet!) But the day I realized every human being is intrinsically worthy of compensation for their time, was in October 2022. I was asked by the Endorphin Foundation, a non-profit organization, to be a guest speaker at a fundraising event they were hosting in Joburg. I live across the country, in Durban (for my international readers, I'm in South Africa.) The Endorphin Foundation did something I thought was out of reach for me at my stage of the author journey. They paid for my my flights there and back, just to speak at their event, even though I was nowhere near being a headlining name (and I'm still not - yet, but I intend to be!) I had thought you could only be compensated for your time and knowledge if your presence had celebrity-level gravitas. But the Endorphin Foundation changed my belief about that. Even though they thanked me for turning up to their event, the real thanks is to them for showing me that I am worth something. They made a permanent repair to my self-esteem when they did that, for which I will always be grateful.
When you experience what it's like to be treated right, it changes what you are willing to tolerate.
So now that I've experienced what compensation feels like, and I know there are organizations out there who believe I am worth it, I won't take up offers from anyone that doesn't. Compensation doesn't have to be monetary, because as someone running a growing a business myself, I know money for luxuries (like paying to fly guests over for a few hours) isn't always available. Compensation has taken various forms for me over the years:
- Comic Con Cape Town and Comic Con Africa gave me and my business free marketing exposure to thousands of people on their website and social media in exchange for me doing stage appearances at their 2024 events.
- Reddam House Umhlanga, the private school, gave me a generous R1,000 gift voucher to Woolworths for a 20 minute talk at an English teacher conference. The event also resulted in me getting booked at other schools, by teachers who had attended, so I felt fairly compensated through further opportunities.
- a radio interview I did with Lotus FM earned me free business advertising on national radio, usually worth thousands of rands. It further resulted in a fruitful relationship with the station, so definitely a good trade off for my time.
- The Ballito Writer's Club hosted me as a guest speaker during a monthly meeting. It was my task to share some information about the publishing process at KREST. I usually don't give out this information unless it is a paid publishing consultation with a client. But the club snagged me 3 newspaper features about my books and business in return, since they have a good relationship with a journalist.
3. I won't participate in event organization.
My wariness comes in with organizers who invite me as a guest to appear at their own planned event, and then expect that I will do the bulk of the work in bringing an audience, my media contacts, and other resources I have access to. I feel staked out as a guest specifically for my lateral networks.
Then, I am not a guest at your event - I am someone who has been inadvertently roped into your event organization efforts.
A classic example of this happened a few months back. I was asked to be a guest hostess for a book event - a guest hostess is like an interviewer who facilitates discussion between the authors and audience present at the event. I gladly agreed (no payment, of course, out of camaraderie for the book community). The event organizer assured me it wouldn't be more than 3 hours, and all I had to do - per agreement - was show up and facilitate the conversation on the day. It wasn't supposed to be any different from any of the other events I had been invited to as a guest speaker. But in the weeks leading up to the event, it became clear I had been clinched with the intent of them leveraging my personal resources. The event organizer wanted me to use my personal and business social media to promote their event, plus wanted me to bring my network of clients and partners to it. The event organizer had no audience of their own so essentially I wasn't turning up to entertain their audience as a guest speaker does - I was invited so that I could bring my own audience for them.
Another example, since I'm on a roll, happened at a book gathering recently. I was asked to be a panelist at a book discussion. Again, no different from any other guest appearance - a set of organizers put together the event and then simply asked me to come along and participate as a guest panelist at their own affair. After agreeing, next thing I know I'm being asked to get my company's copywriter to whip up a press release about the event. Again, I found myself not a guest, but someone who was being used for my resources, to help someone else plan their event.
I've stopped saying yes to events where the organizers are not coming with a pre-planned strategy of how their event is going to be rolled out. They need to have their own audience, their own plan for marketing their event, and their own resources to execute their idea. I think it is horrible etiquette to invite a guest speaker and expect them to get down in the trenches to slog the event with you. A guest appearance should lean heavily into the word guest.
Bonus one: I also don't say yes to guest appearance invites or interviews that are less than 1 week in advance. It isn't enough time for me to plan decent speaking notes and it also shows lack of event organization if the program hasn't been finalized in advance. My only exception is newspaper or magazine interviews, who I know work on current time weekly deadlines.
So after enough mishaps, I have finally formulated the above three rules to help me curate the invites I will say yes to. Believe me, I understand the temptation is great, as a new author, to say yes to everything that comes your way, just to get your name on the map. But I can promise that your author journey will skyrocket if you set some standards for yourself and only participate in events that place you in front of the right people, and offer you the right kind of treatment.
You'd rather get used to treating yourself with value now - once you earmark yourself as someone who comes easy to everything, with no expectations, you will find it hard to break through the ceiling of that place later on.
If there is one thing I would change about my own author journey, it would be that I wish I had embraced being a high standards woman - a little bit of a diva - much earlier on.
For more articles written by Keli H, the author, visit this blog's home page on keli-h.com
Keli H is the award winning author of the 400 series, which includes The Four Hundred Club and Splitting an Empire. The 400 series is high brow contemporary fiction revolving around the lives of wealthy circles. Keli's other works include Creating Literary Art. She is also the founder of The KREST House, a storytelling empire.
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