I posted an updated speaking gig calendar last night. In response a bunch folks wanted to know the exact details for this or that gig and went and checked the various university websites and events calendars for the 411. Not surprisingly, these efforts often turn out to be fruitless. The problem is that I am often brought in by campus conservative groups, often the College Republicans (such is the case with AU tonight), and the schools often fail to put these events on their official calendars (you’re free to speculate why). Not much I can do about that. Also, I often don’t get the final details of time and place until pretty late, so I can’t always provide that info until fairly close to the actual events. But for planning purposes you can pretty much always assume that they’ll start in the early evening, usually 7ish. Anyway, I wish I could provide everything way in advance, but that’s hard.
As for people asking why I’m not coming to this or that city or state, the answer is that I need to be invited. And before you start typing please note: An email from a well-intentioned reader — “come on down, you can sleep on the futon in my basement” — doesn’t really do the trick. Now that the formal book tour stuff is winding down, about 90% of these events are booked through my speaker’s bureau Keppler Speakers. In other words, there’s an honorarium, travel costs, etc involved. It’s part of how I make a living. Also, I’ve been traveling so much, the only way I can justify more travel to my wife and to myself (try to be a deadline columnist while racing through the Atlanta airport three days a week) is if I get compensated or if it’ll sell large quantities of books (or if I piggy back the freebie stuff onto other compensated travel, which I’ve been doing a lot of).
Anyway, sorry to spill all of this out for all to see, but I get a lot of email about this stuff and rather than respond to each one I thought this would work better.
If you are interested in having me come speak to a group or some such about the book, please do drop me a line and we’ll see if we can work it out with my formal schedule etc. I’m still committed to doing everything I can to promote the book, when reasonable.
If you’re affiliated with some conservative group and you don’t think you can scrounge the full cost of bringing me out, you should still contact Keppler in that they work with organizations like the Young America’s Foundation (who can often help defray costs) to bring conservatives to campus.
As for “corporate” and trade associations interested in standard punditry (of the serious and/or humorous variety or as part of the Goldberg-Beinart Road Show), I really wish I got more gigs like that. I think I’m a pretty entertaining and engaging speaker, or at least I try to be. And that’s where the real money in this business is anyway. So you folks should definitely contact Keppler as well.
Now, if you’re the CEO of some billion dollar company and you want me to come on out and stay in your villa while we discuss politics, fascism and Battlestar Galactica you should probably contact me directly and we’ll work something out.