When John Shors, a longtime PR agency veteran, was preparing for the publishing of his novel, Beneath a Marble Sky, he decided to put his own promotional talents to work for himself.

With a creative idea and a shoestring budget, he managed to garner a big-league level of publicity for himself and his work.

Strategy

Shors set out to create a grassroots demand for his novel. "I understood that book clubs were incredibly important to the success of a book," he says. "So ...