This week I had the opportunity to read and review an eBook by author Staci Stallings, who I recently had the pleasure of meeting on a Christian Writers' forum on Facebook.  Her book Keys to Creating a Successful Book Marketing Strategy is a resource I was excited to get my hands on, and now I'm eager to start implementing her advice.  Below her picture and brief biography is the review I wrote for the book on Amazon (I gave it four stars).

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci's stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That's what keeps Staci writing and you reading.

Keys to Creating a Successful Book Marketing Strategy is a great little book for writers, especially (but not only) new indie writers who are looking for ways to actually make money on the books they’ve worked so hard to publish.  The chapters are short and easy to get through quickly, but they’re packed with useful information, much of which you could sit down and apply right away.

As I read, I kept highlighting details that I want to be able to refer back to and make sure I’m doing right.  It wasn’t so much that the information consisted of totally new concepts (although some of it was new to me).  Much of it is common sense, at least in retrospect.  It was more just that everything Stallings said clicked into place in a way that made me understand what I probably should have known all along.  I kept thinking, “Yes – that’s me!  She’s describing my mistakes exactly!”  🙂  And thanks to her, now I know how to start fixing them.

Stallings not only explains what to do, she hands out many of the tools necessary to do it.  For example, one useful feature in the book is a list of dozens of sites where authors can get their books reviewed online (which I can hardly wait to start looking into)!  That alone would probably make it worth the purchase price. 

“If content is king, then skills are queen,” Stallings says.  I feel like the royal couple is now ready to at least begin their joint reign in my writing and marketing!

I didn’t give the book five stars because I did find a few typos, and now and then I thought things could have been phrased/presented a little more clearly (hey, I’m a teacher, I can’t help but notice these things!).  Occasionally the author sounded uncertain about her own information, saying things like, “I believe there is a way to…”  In the section about packaging your content, I would have liked a bit more info about specific sites and what to do with them.  For example, it mentioned “alternative sites like Squidoo and Redditt” and “YouTube, etc.” but didn’t really say how writers can make use of them.  I know this book is intended as a brief overview of book marketing and can’t talk about everything, but I would have liked just a little more.

Overall, Keys to Creating a Successful Book Marketing Strategy is well written and a very useful resource.  I love that it not only gives information and advice but also directs readers to helpful sites and other resources.  I whole-heartedly recommend this book as a worthwhile investment for writers.