Speakers Bureau

Agio Publishing House's publisher, Bruce Batchelor, and most of our authors are available to speak to conferences and other gatherings. Workshops can also be arranged. Please contact us with as much advance notice as possible to make a booking.

These subject matter experts are also available on short notice to be interviewed for newspaper and magazine articles, and to appear as commentators on TV and radio.

Bruce Batchelor is an eloquent and passionate presenter. He speaks at writers conferences, lectures at universities and colleges, and delivers professional development workshops to publishers' association meetings. Recent topics presented include 'How Indie Authors Will Sell More Books Using the Multiple Long Tails Strategy', 'Selling Outside the Bookstore', 'Finding New Revenue Sources for Publishers', 'How the Internet is Changing the Author's Legal Position on Copyright', and 'Trends in Publishing and Book Marketing'. Bruce is frequently interviewed on radio and TV, and for magazine articles.

Read Bruce's blog about book marketing trends at bookmarketing.agiopublishing.com/.

Click here to listen to an October 2007 interview of Bruce Batchelor by Terry Spence on the Victoria, BC, CFAX-1070 AM show, "Talk It Over With Terry Spence". This MP3 is a 44Mb file so it may take a while to download to your computer or, if your computer is set up properly, the audio will begin almost immediately.

Click here to listen to an April 2007 interview of Bruce Batchelor by Samuel Charles Andrews, host of The Radio Book Show on Seattle's AM 1150 radio. This MP3 is a 35Mb file.

Click here to listen to a CBC-Radio Canada interview recorded in 2003 when Bruce was CEO and publisher at Trafford Publishing. This is an 18 Mb file in MP3 format.

Bruce regularly presents at Simon Fraser University's Master of Publishing program (part of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing) and their summer PubWorks program. He recently delivered a workshop on book marketing at the Pacific Festival of the Book, and presented to the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC). Last year he presented at the annual general meetings of the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association in Halifax and the Association of Canadian Publishers in Toronto.

Suggested questions for talk show hosts interviewing Bruce:

1. What are the most effective tactics for promoting a self-published book?
2. Self-publishing sometimes gets a bad rap. Is this justified and are attitudes changing?
3. How much should an aspiring author expect to spend to have their book published and marketed?
4. Are regular bookstores in trouble with so much shopping happening online? What percentage of book sales happen online?
5. Describe how you came to invent print-on-demand publishing - where did this happen and why?
6. What is the size of this POD publishing industry - in sales volume and in number of new authors?
7. What's happening with electronic books - the so-called eBooks? Are they catching on? When will they be commonplace?
8. In your new book, BOOK MARKETING DEMYSTIFIED, you are very positive about audio books. Why? Is the popularity of this form of book growing? Who's buying them?
9. Climate change is a hot topic these days (no pun intended). You write about the book publishing industry's business practices as causing "shocking waste" and "squandering limited resources such as fresh water". You say it is inexcusable that publishers are "blatantly overprinting." What is going on that is so bad for the environment, and what can listeners do to pressure publishing companies to change?
10. What advice can you give to someone thinking about writing a book, but who can't get started?

Read Bruce's blog about book marketing trends at bookmarketing.agiopublishing.com/.

Please contact us to arrange an appearance or interview with Major General Val Pattee and other Agio Publishing House personalities.

Val was just interviewed on CBC Radio One's All Points West program. Host Jo-Ann Roberts said, "I was hooked when I started reading it... I found myself comparing it to Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum..." Later she expressed surprise that major publishers and agents hadn't snapped up this book and predicted that producers would soon notice it: "It really sounds like a movie."

• Click here to listen! www.valpattee.com/ValCBC.mp3 (8 minute interview)

The Onion Files is "a very good story and a pleasure to read" says Terry Spence, host of CFAX 1070 Talk Radio with Terry Spence. "It has that feel of truth to it like the guy who wrote it really knows what goes on in that part of our world."

• Click here to listen! www.valpattee.com/CFAXValPatteecompact.mp3 (18 minute interview)

Val was also interviewed on The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge on Calgary's CHQR AM770. He will give a speech at the Royal Victoria Probus Club in May and presentation at the Western State Law Enforcement Conference in Yakima, WA, in July.

Suggested questions for interviewing General Val Pattee:

1. What prompted you to write The Onion Files?
2. Is your book based on reality, on some of the intelligence that you saw?
3. As the former chief of intelligence for NATO in Europe you must be constrained in what you can say. How did you deal with the secrecy issues as you were writing?
4. How did you as a Canadian fighter pilot get to be the head spy for NATO?
5. That's quite a position for a Canadian. How did that happen?
6. Did you get to wear a trench coat and fedora?
7. Can the reader read things between the lines about how the business was conducted?
8. The job you had sounds like out of a novel or a movie. Was it like Bogart in the movie Casablanca?
9. While you were NATO's top spy, the terrorists were homegrown within Europe: the Red Brigade and Action Direct. How was the intelligence community tracking them down, and what is different for today's anti-terrorism agencies?
10. Why did you set your book around 9/11 and al-Qaeda?
11. How vulnerable are we?
12. What comes after The Onion Files in this series?
13. How is The Onion Files being marketed -- I understand you've got a blog, an eBook version, both hard and softcover editions and you are recording an audio book edition too?

Read Val's blog at onionfiles.valpattee.com/. and see his website at www.valpattee.com/ for the latest news about The Onion Files and its sequel.

Please contact us to arrange an appearance or interview with Barry Mathias and other Agio Publishing House personalities.

Barry has a rich background in theatre -- as an actor, playwright and director. His website is www.barrymathias.com.

Suggested questions for interviewing Barry Mathias:

1. how does writing for the theatre help a novelist with pacing and dialogue?
2. how accurate is the historical detail -- lifestyles, the weapons, the events?
3. have concepts of love, power and bravery changed since the 12th century?
4. what multi-media plans are afoot for this trilogy?