Jay Allen; Colorful Book Publicist for Legions of American Authors

Jay Allen, a book publicist who enhanced the careers of such writers as Jacqueline Susann, Gore Vidal and Joseph Wambaugh, has died. He was 79.

Allen, sometimes called “book publishing’s Johnny Appleseed of the West,” died Wednesday night of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

“Allen really wrote the blueprint for book plugging and promotion in this [Los Angeles] market,” radio host Michael Jackson wrote for The Times when Allen retired more than 15 years ago. “Now, per capita, we spend more on books in Los Angeles than in any other place.”

Convinced that authors needed to create their own readership, Allen blazed the trail for book promotion in California and is credited with giving rise to the national phenomenon of the book promotion tour.

The unusual publicist, authors and critics agree, deserved much of the credit for the surging volume of book sales in Southern California and across the nation.

In 1968, Allen was hired by Susann to promote her “Valley of the Dolls.” He made the author “mediagenic,” insisting that she study pill-popping so she could speak authoritatively on the subject.

He set up speeches, newspaper interviews, visits to radio and television talk shows, autograph sessions at bookstores, and drove her to them. He also made sure publishers stocked bookstores and obtained prominent display for her book.

A former reporter and publicist for entertainers, Allen had found his niche.

Over the years, he publicized 523 books for 373 authors, including Maya Angelou, William F. Buckley, James Clavell, Moshe Dayan, Helen Hayes, Lillian Hellman, Judith Krantz, Anita Loos, Robert Ludlum, Norman Mailer, William Manchester, Rod McKuen, Sidney Sheldon, Studs Terkel, Margaret Truman, Tom Wolfe and Herman Wouk.

Allen’s technique involved obtaining a manuscript as soon as possible, reading it and then, as he put it, setting out to “see if I could justify my fee.” He arranged advertising for the book and set up a promotional campaign with three days of interviews in Los Angeles, two days in San Francisco and one elsewhere in California.

And he tutored the authors to make sure they had something witty, brief and quotable to say.

For Henri Charriere, the author of “Papillon,” which detailed his escape from Devil’s Island, where he was serving a sentence for murder, Allen staged a colossal publicity event at Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay. Charriere, who did not speak English, had boasted that he could escape from any prison in the world.

Allen arranged for the author to spend a day in the abandoned Alcatraz looking for flaws in its purported invulnerability. Charriere outlined his escape plan to 40 reporters flown in for a press conference on a luxury yacht circling the island. The book topped all bestseller lists the day it was published. Allen’s grateful authors have dedicated books to him and included his name in their official acknowledgments. Susann even made him a character in one of her novels.

He was also consulted as an authority on books by prestigious media including The Times, the New York Times, New Yorker, Esquire and “60 Minutes.”

A native of Dodge City, Kan., Allen studied journalism at the University of Kansas and started out as a reporter with the Dodge City Daily Globe and was a newscaster on Dodge City radio station KGNO. He moved to the Kansas City Star and served as an Army transportation officer aboard the Queen Mary during World War II.

After the war, Allen arrived in Hollywood, where he wrote for gossip columnist Jimmy Fidler’s syndicated column and weekly network radio show.

Persuaded that he could package and sell personalities, ideas and books, Allen began doing publicity for such entertainers as Dick Powell, Gene Autry, Johnny Cash and John Wayne. And then he met Susann.