Living in More Than One World

As I noted in my previous post, I am writing a short series of progress reports/impressions of the first-time author experience for Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. You can only be a first-time author with a new book once in your life, and I want to make the most of it. Besides my first bookstore event last week at Reiter’s Books in Washington, I have made presentations in a variety of settings. I’ve already spoken three times for the Wharton Club of DC; twice in DC (including once for its Nonprofit Roundtable) and once at the City Club in suburban Virginia. I screened my 21 minute Drucker interview DVD at all these events, and will also be screening it on October 15, when I will do a presentation for the Wharton Club of Philadelphia. Speaking to these audiences is especially meaningful for me, as Drucker had a longstanding history with the Wharton School. I’ve also spoken at two Rotary International meetings in suburban Maryland, and have another scheduled for Washington. I haven’t screened the video at these talks. As with the Wharton events so far, Rotary has been a great audience with insightful questions. Reflecting my own different worlds, I also had a well-attended, exhilarating event in early September for DC/SLA, the local chapter of the Special Libraries Association. This had the highest percentage of friends/professional colleagues/former students in the audience. The video was well received, even by people who had seen it before! Libraries are also a crucial part of my event strategy. I had an enjoyable presentation last week at Arlington County, Va., Public Library. This held special significance as I began working on the book when I was living in Arlington, seven years ago. Next week will be the first of two dates for different locations of DC Public Library. More details are on the About page of my website. I’ll post again after I return from my publisher’s author retreat in California next week.

I haven’t posted for a few weeks, so I would like to add to my blog at least once or twice before I leave later this week for an authors’ retreat in California, sponsored by my publisher, Berrett-Koehler. It’s been a little over two months since my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, was published. This post will be the first in a short series of progress reports/impressions of the first-time author experience. I’m focusing mainly on the author events, which have been some of the most crucial activities since publication date. I wrote earlier about the first event (even before the official publication date), the July 11 book signing at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago. I’ve done a mixture of events since then, all of which have been enjoyable and gave me the opportunity to meet and work with a number of interesting new people. Each event requires considerable detail-work ahead of time. The people I’ve worked with have been very good about making sure things work as smoothly as possible. Depending on the setup, I have done a presentation based on the principles in the book, with a brief account of how I came to write it. At some places, I have screened my 21 minute DVD interview with Drucker, which always gets a positive reaction. The audiences have varied in size, but all have had interesting and thought-provoking questions during the Q&A segment. Most of the events have been and will be held in the Washington, D.C. area, where I live, but some will be held in other cities. On October 1, I did my first bookstore presentation, at Reiter’s Books, in downtown Washington. It was an exhilarating experience, with an audience mixture of friends, former students and people I had not met before. We did not screen the video. In the next post, I’ll go into more detail about where I have done the presentations so far, and where I’ll be going in the near future.