1. Chapter 1 I can’t see you naked

2. Chapter 2 The attack of the butterflies

   1. What to do before you speak

3. Chapter 3 $30,000 an hour

4. Chapter 4 How to work a tough room

5. Chapter 5 Do not eat the microphone

   1. Photos you don’t expect to see

6. Chapter 6 The science of not boring people

   1. Set the pace

   2. Direct the attention (“What am I looking at and why?”)

   3. Play the part: you’re the star

   4. Know what happens next

   5. Tension and release

   6. Get the audience involved

   7. You are judge, jury, and executioner

   8. Always end early

7. Chapter 7 Lessons from my 15 minutes of fame

   1. We perform all the time

   2. Teleprompters (and memorization) are evil

8. Chapter 8 The things people say

   1. The sneaky lessons of Dr. Fox

   2. Why most speaker evaluations are useless

   3. The speaker must match the audience

   4. Expert feedback you can get right now

9. Chapter 9 The clutch is your friend

   1. Why teaching is almost impossible

   2. How to teach anyone anything

10. Chapter 10 Confessions

    1. Backstage notes

1. Appendix The little things pros do

   1. The confidence monitor

   2. The countdown timer

   3. The remote control

   4. Give stuff away to fill the front row

   5. Hide your microphone (and wear a collar)

   6. We don’t need no stinking badges

   7. Lectern vs. podium

   8. Work the camera

2. Appendix How to make a point

   1. Being silent makes your points

3. Appendix What to do if your talk sucks

   1. Why your talk might suck

   2. Medium list of little things

4. Appendix What to do when things go wrong

   1. You’re being heckled

   2. Everyone is staring at their laptops

   3. Your time slot gets cut from 45 minutes to 10

   4. Everyone in the room hates you

   5. One guy won’t stop asking questions

   6. There is a rambling question that makes no sense and takes three minutes to ask

   7. You are asked an impossible question

   8. The microphone breaks

   9. Your laptop explodes

   10. There is a typo on your slide (nooooo!)

   11. You’re late for your own talk

   12. You feel sick

   13. You’re running out of time

   14. You left your slide deck at home

   15. Your hosts are control freaks

   16. You have a wardrobe malfunction

   17. There are only five people in the audience

   18. What to do if your situation is not here

5. Appendix You can’t do worse than this

   1. Does anyone speak Georgian?

   2. What to do when the SWAT team comes

   3. A funny thing happened on my way to the stage

   4. Death by lecture

   5. CEO demo gone wrong

   6. Do not set anything on fire

   7. No one likes surprise porn

   8. I see sleeping people

   9. At worst we will shoot you

   10. Don’t blame the trains

   11. You work where?

   12. Watch your slides

   13. Why you don’t want to be up against Bono

   14. You will never speak of this to anyone

   15. Watch where you sit

   16. Please make a new talk and give it five minutes from now

   17. Check your mirror

   18. Waterproofing cannot save you

   19. Why you should not lecture in bars

6. Appendix Research and recommendations

   1. Annotated bibliography

   2. Studying comedians

   3. Ranked bibliography

   4. Other research sources

7. Appendix How to help this book: a request

8. Appendix Acknowledgments

9. Appendix Photo credits

10. Appendix

11. Colophon

The cover image is a composite of two photos from iStock and Corbis. The cover font is ITC Franklin Gothic. The text font is Sabon; the heading font is BentonSans. The paper for these fine pages is 50-pound Creme, a perfect blend of moderate porosity (air permeability of less than 15 centimeters per minute), delightful compressibility, and high-performance ink hold-out ratios, well suited for confessional and memoir monographs.

And thus, in a few simple sentences, you have now read the greatest, most miraculous colophon of all time.

You see, what you can't possibly know is that once upon a time, one score and 17 years ago, in a galaxy not at all far away, on a planet indistinguishable from the one you are on now, it was a dark time for colophons. Few knew what colophons were for, nor who wrote them. Billions of people finished books every year, denied the sacred knowledge of what kind of paper had been in their hands and what typefaces they'd read, and fell into suicidal levels of depression. It was a dark time indeed. But that year something happened. The greatest colophonist of all time was born. Her powers were so far beyond mortal comprehension, they called her the chosen one. She could identify fonts in 6-point type, while blindfolded and standing on one foot, from several hundred miles away. With barely a sniff from her perfect little nose, she could name the inks used on even the oldest pages known to man. With the slightest touch of her pinkie finger, and the thinnest slice of attention from her potent mind, she could sense the weight of any print stock made, and the genus and species of all trees used to produce them.

Her only aids were a small set of magical colophony tools she'd forged from metals too rare to be known to ordinary men, tools she kept in a small satchel. A satchel she kept safe by strapping it to her foot. Legend has it, this sacred satchel was called, to those permitted to say the words, the divine footbag.

But since her natural powers were unmatched and her force of mind incomparable, she rarely used those tools nor opened the sacred bag on her foot that contained them. To our great sadness, for years she refused to work on any books, feeling they were unworthy of her world-transforming powers.

She wrote colophons in private and kept them for herself. There were rumors she'd ghostwritten colophons for J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, but those rumors were never confirmed. When she was asked to work on this book, the world shook at the prospect that she might say yes. Angels cried in joy. Writers considered being less pretentious. Politicians wondered about committing fewer crimes. Even the rain made plans to avoid weddings and camping trips forevermore. It was a wondrous moment of potential for life, the universe, and everything.

But she said no.

She found us and our ways quite annoying.

Especially our tendency to use single-sentence paragraphs.

And the world wept.

Twice.

And when we did not give up, instead choosing to hound her relentlessly to work on this book through emails, text messages, and boxes of homemade cupcakes that said, in 6-point Arial vanilla micro-frosting we knew only she could read, "Pleeeeze be our colofoonist!", she became angry. She knew Arial was a font for lazy heathens, a disrespect to her talents and her kind. Hell hath no fury like a colophonist scorned. All too late we realized our mistake, and knew the next time she saw us, it would be the end of us all.

The next day, as we stumbled in misery through town, knowing all was lost without a good colophonist for this book, we saw her across the street, and she saw us, too. We considered running, but there was nowhere to hide. Her eyes narrowed intensely, in the same terrifying way they did when she found a mislabeled typeface or poorly sourced cover stock photo. She pounced off the sidewalk and raced into the street at preternatural speed and at an angle that defied the laws of geometry, making our escape impossible. But we did not despair, for she made one mistake. She forgot to look both ways before crossing. And she was crushed by the oncoming bus.

It was in fact two buses, one going in each direction, but the effect on her powers was much the same. The buses--with large advertisements well labeled in 80-point Helvetica heavy bold, printed on prepressed sheets of four-color vinyl, produced by a digital printscreen transfer--flattened her like an escalope. Her wondrous powers were no more.

Emerging from the carnage, bouncing and rolling its way to our feet, was a small satchel. Could it be? Yes, indeed. It was the small magic bag she wore on her foot. The footbag had survived. Behold the mighty footbag!

And it was only through the careful application of those tools, tools not meant for mere mortals to see, much less use, that the immense challenges of this colophon were overcome. If it were not for the sacrifice of the chosen one, this colophon, this book, and this entire publishing industry we take for granted would not have been possible. Instead of the glory of this colophon and its related--possibly fictional--backstory, this page would be empty and you'd forever wonder about the making of the book you just read. May the footbag, and the wonders of colophons, stay with us forever. Long live the colophon.