Book Review: Sell Your Book Like Wildfire: The Writer’s Guide to Marketing and Publicity by Rob Eagar

Are you familiar with writers’ angst when marketing and promoting your book? Sell Your Book Like Wildfire: The Writer’s Guide to Marketing and Publicity puts a positive spin on the task of making your book sell. In addition to being an author, Rob Eagar is a marketing consultant so he offers a fresh perspective on the process, with loads of ideas for marketing and promotion.

Concepts covered include:

• working with a publisher,
• use of social media,
• turning your book into a brand,
• exercises to make sure you know where the value is in your product,
• and how to convey that value.

If you read this book, and really process the core message, you’ll determine how you can improve the lives of your readers, and help create tangible results. Your value is your single most powerful marketing weapon. Eagar gets off to a fast start with a wake-up call about the true value of what you offer in your book…

What is your value?
Who needs your value most?
Where do the people who need your value congregate?

“Brand” is a fairly new term for today’s overwrought authors. Since publishers do less, you have to do more to get your book known. Eagar explains “When you build a brand that explains your value up front, people who have never heard of you are able to feel a positive connection to you from the very beginning.”

Next, you’ll learn the how to be brief, memorable, and valuable. To quote the author: “You have an author brand whether you know it or not. …Why be bland when you can have a brand.”

While Sell Your Book Like Wildfire is a powerful book for existing authors looking to sell more books, it is especially helpful to read before you publish. The author pulls you along as you learn to analyze the value of your book and helps you tighten your focus to reach your core audience. In keeping with the title’s “fire” theme, he offers advice on spreading a wildfire to create awareness. Another value-added bonus is the list of ideas to build marketing materials right into your book.

Don’t think marketing starts after your book is done – you can plan your strategy and incorporate marketing tools throughout your book. With an extensive chapter on using Amazon to sell more books, Sell Your Book Like Wildfire will have you earning more royalties with less effort.

“With over one million new books published each year, the world doesn’t need more authors who just write their books. Rather, the world needs more authors who know how to get their books in front of more readers,” says Eagar.

The most critical concept to absorb is finding your value statement and making a difference in the reader’s life.

Even if you already have a book out, you can jumpstart your marketing again with his strategies. As he says” Facts may get attention, but feelings get action.”

Use his strategies and bonus materials online to inject new life into your book.