How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers

I purchased this book in hopes of enhancing the content of my "advanced public speaking" class, given the popularity of the TED talks. Upon receipt, I can't believe I wasted my money.

The content is not only lacking but also poorly written and edited. The book rattles off random statistics without any regard to crediting the appropriate sources and frequently makes unsupported claims. This is a plainly irresponsible, poor practice--especially for an author who claims to be such an accomplished speaker -- rule #1 from any speech teacher is to cite your sources so to enhance the credibility of your claims.

In addition, the book falls prey to "soundbite" syndrome -- The book tries too hard to boil down the content into bullet points shortly written -- to some extent, I suppose it succeeds in this regard -- unfortunately at the expense of any depth of understanding, coherence, or sense of organization. The use of bullet points, ironically, often leads to the author's use of long lists, which is usually considered a poor organizational strategy for writing and/or public speaking. Add to this ...the fact that book switches back and forth between bullets and numbered and UN-numbered lists, making the content sometimes difficult to follow.

Organization is certainly not the strong-suit of this book/author.

The table of contents is completely useless. If one is looking for chapter 2, "how to find your core message," he or she will fail to find it (neither on page 11 as the table of contents indicates, nor in the book, period). If one turns to the book's chapter 2, he/she finds "creating a repeatable power phrase" instead, which, incidentally is listed as chapter 3 in the table of contents. Similarly, the page numbers also fail to match up, and given that the problems with page and chapter numbers begin early in the text, they only worsen as the book progresses in length--not to mention the fact that some of the chapters are also reversed.

Similar issues plague the writing as well. Take for instance the chapter labeled "building the body of your presentation," which, in a subheading, suggests 10 anchors to make your points memorable, only to a few sentences later suggest that "you can choose any one of the following _eight_ anchors". The chapter actually provides a list of 10 -- but it is these simple writing and editing issues that are organizationally maddening.

These glaring problems in editing and content should be the first indication of the poor quality of this book. The second warning flag is that the book fails to adequately cite sources (in the body of text and/or with a reference page) NO Works Cited page or Bibliography is present or provided in this book, which makes me question both the integrity and the ethics of the author. Finally, those purchasing this book should be aware that the book _appears_ to be self published (another red flag), as there is no "identifiable" publisher listed on the title page of the book -- or anywhere for that matter. In fact, I did not know that Amazon sold "self-published" books - I will now know to be cautious of this for the future - If I'd have realized this was published independent of a reputable press - I never would have purchased the book in the first place.

In sum, the organization of this book is a nightmare. The content lacks depth and in some cases is questionable with seemingly unsupported claims. Further, the lack of bibliography and source citation should be of concern to any responsible speaker.

For responsible knowledge, a standard public speaking textbook and/or class would serve as a much better resource.

First of all, I really do like this book, it's full of insightful information. HOWEVER, the Table of Contents is a train wreck, and a couple of chapters don't even exist. I spent the better part of an hour sorting this mess out. This is my 3rd copy of the book from Amazon and all had the same problems. So I decided to just keep this copy and fix the problems myself.

Further problems include repeated chapter headings, take Introduction, which reads "Success Principles for TED Talks", on page 3. Then the same title is repeated again on page 11. The text is not repeated, just the heading.

Chapter 2, titled "Find Your Core Message" does not exist on page 11 (as stated in the Table of Contents), or anywhere else in the book.

Chapter 10, titled "Creating the WOW Moment" is repeated again with different text on pages 93 and 103. Again, the text that IS different, it's not that they simply repeated a chapter, that would be the book binder's fault. The author wrote two seperate chapters and used the same title. The ToC reads that this chapter is on page 77, it's not. As stated above it's on pages 93 and 103.

Chapter ? titled "Using Analogies, Metaphors and Similies" does not have a chapter number or page number. It's on page 109.

None of the page numbers in the ToC match the chapter numbers. Here's an example:

Chapter 5: ToC page number reads 24, it should be 29.
Chapter 6: 45 should be 55.
Chapter 7: 57 should be 69.
Chapter 8: 65 should be 78.
Chapter 9: 71 should be 85.
Chapter 10: 77 should be 93 & 103.
Chapter 11: 81 should be 99.
Chapter 12: 85 (chapter doesn't exist anywhere in book).
Chapter 13: 87 should be 105.
Chapter 14: 91 should be 115.
Chapter 15: 97 should be 123.
Chapter 16: 103 should be 131.
Chapter 17: 109 should be 137.
Chapter 18: 113 should be 143.
Chapter 19: 117 should be 149.
Chapter 20: 127 should be 155.
Chapter 21: 133 should be 163.
Chapter 22: 135 should be 167.
Chapter 23: 141 should be 175.
Chapter 24: 149 should be 185.
Chapter 25: 153 should be 189.

In closing it appears that reading the book from cover to cover would be your best bet, just don't try to look anything specific up using the Table of Contents. There is no index, that's probably a good thing since the publisher, editor, author and bookbinder missed the boat on this one.

This book gives a very detail formula on how to deliver a great ted talk, however, the version that I was reading had printing errors and I can not even use the index to revisit the topics discuss within the pages.

I would suggest that you make an index of all of the TED talks that he is making reference in order to watch it later. The book failed to provide an index of them, so now I have to go back and write the list myself - not happy about it!!!

In one or two cases, the chapter titles do not match either the table contents or the actual content of the chapter -- but the actual content does make some fine points about bringing your presentations up to TED standards.

Wonderful, very helpfull.

I believe anyone that makes a presentation or does so on a regular basis will benefit from reading this book!

I have been a Toastmaster for 5 years and have given many speeches and have read many books on speaking. This one is, hands down, the best book I have read on how to give an outstanding speech. It gets 5 stars from me. Worth the money!

I bought this book just as I was preparing a talk, so it proved to be very helpful. The tips are basic, but organized and explained in a way that's easy to get. The only complaint is that the writer should have hired an editor. It would have been better without all the typos.

Excellent, great tips were provided, I learned a lot. I urge everyone to buy this book, you'll be glad you did!

Very good book with lots of good examples and specific hints about how to improve your talks and speeches
Liked it!!!