Four Books that Will Make You a Better Presenter

I’m often asked to recommend the best book on PowerPoint, and it’s hard to select just one, because it truly depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Here are four of my favorite, along with links to more in-depth posts I’ve written about three of them.

So much depends on the size of the audience, and related to that is the level of interactivity you expect.

If you’re delivering a “ballroom” type speech to hundreds of people, your slides are going to contain very few words, and comprise mostly visuals that add impact and memorability to what you say. Nancy Duarte’s Resonate is excellent for learning how to structure your story and present it visually. Garr Reynolds’ book Presentation Zen Design can help even the most aesthetically-challenged non-designer put together something that looks good.

For most business presentations, you will probably be in a much smaller room and there will be a lot of back and forth discussion, so you need a briefing or a discussion deck, and Bruce Gabrielle’s Speaking PowerPoint is in my estimation far and away the best book for this.

Finally, as a reminder, visuals do not have to be slides; you can get the audience involved in putting together your story with interactive visuals, and for this I recommend Whiteboard Selling by Sommers and Jenkins.

Never forget that slides are tools, and the best tool to use depends on the job you need it to do.