Speakers Fees

I haven't thought of this technique when it comes to setting speaker's fees!

When I was a student at the University of Chicago, I once went to hear Nelson Algren deliver a lecture, the proceeds of which were to go to the Chicago Review, the University's little magazine on which I was a sub-editor. I remember not a word of Algren's lecture - it was more in the nature of a talk - but I do recall his introductory remarks. "For a thousand dollars," he said, "I will give a talk in a tuxedo. For five hundred I will wear a business suit. For two-fifty, I appear in a sport jacket, slacks, and necktie. One hundred dollars gets you a jacket and slacks but no tie. I'll let you guess what I'm being paid tonight." Algren was wearing a pair of baggy washpants, none too clean, and a shiny shirt, which must even then have been fifteen years old, with a zipper running diagonally across it. This was Algren's characteristically delicate way of saying he was speaking for nothing.



- Joseph Epstein