The Liminal Librarian has posted the results of her “speaking survey.” Interesting stuff for those of us who do or did give speeches from time to time.
I come away from the survey more willing to state an expected fee if the requesting group doesn’t make an offer up front (and if the event isn’t considered part of my job, which changes the landscape considerably)–and probably more willing to question some offers. (It’s been a quiet period, but that could always change.)
Now if “Liminal” (Rachel Singer Gordon) wanted to do a little more work, what I’d love to see are banded results: That is, for a given type of presentation, the top 25% charged between X and Y with a median (not mean) of Z, and so on. Given 90 responses, and that the number who asked for any honorarium ranges from 16 to 42, I can’t imagine taking the analysis further than quartiles, and even that may be too fine.
Hey, Rachel: If you can anonymize the results, I’d be happy to do that breakdown. But it’s asking a lot for you to do more than you’ve already done.
Thanks for doing the survey. It may make the whole bargaining-to-speak process a little more transparent.
Walt: Thanks, glad it’s useful! I’m not sure, though, that slicing the data any more finely would be helpful, given the relatively small number of people who answered each question. I think that the survey has served its purpose; if someone wants to do a larger-scale project, though, and perhaps break things down by conference type, etc., there’s a lot more room here.