Did you quote someone in your book? Use them to get local book publicity

Get more local book publicity for your nonfiction book by contacting the hometown media of sources you quoted or referenced in the book.

Black Velvet Canadian Whisky originally built its brand in the U.S. around billboard and magazine advertising featuring “the Black Velvet lady,” a stunning but approachable blonde lounging in a black velvet dress.

The iconic campaign was a launchpad for many of America’s first generation of supermodels, including Christie Brinkley, Cybill Shepherd, Cheryl Tiegs, and Kim Alexis.

When hired by the brand’s importer to build excitement around the advertising, I worked with the brand team to create “The Black Velvet Model Search,” a nationwide grassroots search for the next Black Velvet lady.

The Search included live competitions in key markets across the country and a mail-in option available through entry forms in liquor (package) stores. Regional winners went on to compete in a live national competition with celebrity judges.

Each year’s national winner was featured in a Black Velvet advertising campaign that mirrored 1970s ads with Brinkley, Shepherd, and others.

Local publicity leads to national award

The brand received an impressive amount of local print and broadcast publicity due in large part to the press release “factory” I created.

Technology allowed me to merge a fill-in-the-blanks-type press release with a database of localized information to generate market-by-market press releases. As a result, I could send the media in each local market press releases relevant to just them, not the press in other cities hosting competitions.

Personalized local press releases emphasizing the brand’s advertising legacy and the visual appeal of a live “modeling” competition included:

• Local dateline
• List of local events complete with date, time, and place
• Name and telephone number of the local distributor to call for an interview

At its peak, the Black Velvet Model Search was named the best beverage alcohol publicity program in the country that year. It also won a local public relations award.

That free media exposure also contributed to a brand sales increase in an industry that was experiencing a slump.

Use this tactic to generate local book publicity

So… what does this have to do with authors publicizing their books? Stay with me. There’s an idea in this for nonfiction authors who have quoted others in their books.

Every individual or expert you’ve quoted in your book lives somewhere, right? So, tell the media outlets in your quoted source’s community that they were featured in your book.

Any resulting publicity is a two-fer. It reinforces your source’s credibility and reputation while it gets your book title in the news.

Start with a local book publicity template

To do this, create a fill-in-the-blanks press release to send to the hometown media of each of the experts or other types of resources — including people who provided anecdotes — in your book.

Here’s a sample local book publicity fill-in-the-blanks press release you can download and use to get started. Because it’s generic, you’ll want to make sure your resulting press release for each source reads well and makes sense, but that won’t be hard.

Click the “download” button here to download and save the template: 

How to use it

After completing a press release for each outside source, send it to the appropriate media contacts in their community. E-mail it by copying and pasting the completed press release into the e-mail message (don’t attach it).

For this type of news, you’ll send it to newspapers, city magazines, city or regional business publications, and radio stations, but not TV stations. TV news programs don’t use this material. At each outlet, send it to:

• Weekly newspaper: Editor
• Daily newspaper: The appropriate section editor or beat reporter, depending on the book’s topic (lifestyle? religion? business? education?) and the local section editor
• City magazines and regional business publications: Editor
• Radio stations: Producer of morning drive-time programming

When possible, ask your source for help with the names of local media contacts. Otherwise, you can get everything you need online or by calling.

Yes, it’s work

I won’t pretend that this doesn’t take time and effort.

But I won both a national and local publicity award for a client by making this effort to get the most exposure possible while the client enjoyed an increase in sales as a result.

Anything you can do to get exposure for your book will help, and this tactic won’t cost you a cent. All you need is time. (Short on time? Get an intern.)

Your book, and your relationship with your sources, will benefit from any resulting exposure.

What do you think of this tactic? Are you willing to give it a try?

(Editor’s note: This evergreen article was published in February 2014. It is now updated and expanded.)