Getting local coverage
Local media is the most reachable press an indie author has, and the least used. A national books desk is pitched far more books than it could ever cover, and turns down almost all of them. A county paper, a regional magazine, a community radio station, a local podcast, a library newsletter, a neighborhood bulletin — each of those has pages or minutes to fill every week, and fewer people to fill them than it had five years ago.
That combination is the opportunity. A smaller newsroom does not mean less appetite for stories. It means less time to develop one. An outlet that would once have sent someone out to find an angle now runs what arrives finished.
So arrive finished.
"Local author publishes book" is not a story
It is the most common pitch a local editor receives and the one they least often run. Not out of unkindness — it is simply not news. Books are published constantly, and that someone inside the circulation area published one is a fact, not a story. Turning it into six hundred words means doing all the work themselves, and they do not have the afternoon.
The story is the angle, and the angle is almost never the book. It is one of these:
The subject. If the book is about anything at all — a trade, an illness, a war, a hobby, a decade — the subject is the story and the book is the reason you are the person to talk to.
What happened to you. The reason you wrote it. A job you left, a diagnosis, a year abroad, twenty years of saying you would.
The local connection. The book is set here, or a street here is in it, or a real event here is in it, or the place you researched it is here. This is the strongest angle available to you and the one most authors leave out of the email entirely.
A date. Fifty years since the flood. The centenary of the mill closing. Anniversaries are how listings editors plan, and a book that lines up with one has a slot waiting for it.
Something already in the news. If a subject is being argued about locally this month and your book is about it, you are a source, not a pitch.
The test is short: could the headline exist without the word "book" in it? If it could, you have an angle. If the headline has to say "local author", you do not yet.
Who to contact, and how
A named person. Not news@ or a contact form. Look at recent issues, find who covers arts, features or community, and write to them by name. One named person beats five general addresses, because a general address belongs to nobody.
Put the angle in the subject line. "Debut novel out now" is deleted. "Novel set during the 1976 flood — 50 years in June" is opened, because the subject line already contains the reason to run it.
Keep the email to three short paragraphs. What the angle is. Why it suits their readers. One line on who you are. Everything else linked or attached, not explained.
Follow up once. A single line after about a week, then stop. Editors are not ignoring you; they are closing a page. One reminder is professional and a second is a problem.
For radio and podcasts, say plainly that you can talk for twenty minutes rather than read, and give them a phone number.
What they want that authors do not send
A high-resolution cover. A 6 × 9 front panel with bleed is 1,838 × 2,775 pixels at 300 DPI, and something in that range is what a print page needs. A small image lifted from a retailer listing cannot be used, and a picture desk closing a page will not write back to ask; it will run the piece without a picture.
A high-resolution author photo, with the photographer's credit line if it was not a phone in your kitchen.
One paragraph of description, plain, that can be cut in half without breaking. Not your back-cover copy.
Your availability. "Free any weekday before three, and in town all of June." This one sentence is often what decides between you and the other pitch.
Contact details in the same email. A phone number included. A features desk finishing a page calls; it does not start an email thread.
In the tools. Mockups renders your finished print wrap as a physical book, which is what an outlet means when it asks whether you have an image, and the Cover Maker exports the cover at print resolution for anyone putting it on paper. Start a book → · about the tools
If you have a press kit, all of that is one link — see The press kit nobody asks for until they do. If you do not, attach the files. Never make an editor request access to a shared folder.
Libraries and bookshops are the other half of local
The other half of local is the places in your town that already put books in front of people, and they are considerably easier to reach. There is usually one person who runs events, and that person is usually glad to hear from someone who lives nearby, which is not true of any editor.
Libraries have newsletters, displays, local-author shelves and event slots to fill. Bookshops have a window, a table and a section. Both of them host, and a booked event is itself the thing you pitch to the paper afterward, because it has a date and a place attached. See Getting into libraries and bookstores and Events, signings and selling books in person.
One piece makes the next one easier
Coverage compounds. A published piece is a link in your press kit, evidence for the next pitch, and a sign to the second outlet that somebody independent thought you were worth five hundred words. The third pitch is easier again.
Be honest about the scale. A county paper may sell you a handful of copies on the day. Its real value is that it exists afterward — in search results, in the file a librarian checks before ordering, and in the next email you send.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Merchandise and special editions · Also useful: The press kit nobody asks for until they do · Podcast interviews, and how to get on one · Mockups: showing a book that does not exist yet