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What: “Roberts Rules!”

Author: Marc Roberts

Publisher: Career Press

Price: $24.99

At first glance, this book reeks of ego. Right there on the cover it says, “Success Secrets From America’s Most Trusted Sports Agent.” On the inside jacket, if we are to believe what we read, Marc Roberts, chairman of Worldwide Entertainment and Sports in West Orange, N.J., is a self-made millionaire who built his business from scratch and is now sharing the secrets of his success.

Roberts opens the book’s introduction with, “You may be asking, ‘Who is Marc Roberts and why is he giving advice?’ ”

Our sentiments exactly.

We learn a little more about Roberts, and he certainly isn’t in a class with super-agent Leigh Steinberg or former super-agent Dennis Gilbert. His longtime clients include such as boxers Ray Mercer, Charles “The Natural” Murray and Al “Ice” Cole. He claims his company has grown from five athlete clients to 60 in the last year and a half, and he displays a liberal use of the word “superstar” when it doesn’t really apply.

But if you cut through all the fluff, there is some worthwhile information in the book. It might not change your life, as Roberts claims, but the book isn’t a bad read.

Roberts got into the agent business when he was 19 and a non-scholarship basketball player at American University, where a teammate, Russell “Boo” Bowers, was the nation’s leading scorer. The coach ordered all agents to stop recruiting Bowers, so Roberts became his agent.

Later, when he noticed that an economics professor drove “a 12-year-old rusty heap” and lived in a decrepit apartment, he figured things he learned in college weren’t going to make him rich. So he quit.

Roberts intersperses quotes throughout. Such as: “Before you accept any information as fact, evaluate the source. Ask yourself: Has this person been there? What has he or she accomplished?”

Here’s another: “Jewish boy like me was to get a college degree and then go to graduate school. People thought I was out of my mind when I quit school, but I have always done what I felt in my heart was best.”

In 1991, he had a boxing business, Triple Threat Enterprises, which was operating in the red. Barely 30, he sold the company for $1 million in cash, plus a million shares in the purchasing company. He later sold those shares, netting close to $4 million.

Among the quotes is some decent advice. In Chapter 17 (actually, Roberts breaks the book down in rules, so it’s Rule 17), there is this about polishing your people skills.

“Want to be really different?” he writes. “Instead of trying to make yourself look good, put your energy into making other people feel good.

“Give compliments, encouragement and attention to everyone around you--make people feel special.”