Debut novelist Richard Hine hosted a contest withZooppa inviting participants to create a book trailer for his novel, Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch. First place went to stock 71 (you can watch the trailer in the video embedded above). Stelios came in second and Ezra came in third.
For years, Hine worked on the business side of the newspaper and magazine industry. In fact, he served as vice president of marketing and business development at the Wall Street Journal. Given all his experience, the plot line (given in the trailer) for his novel isn’t all that surprising.
Omnivoracious interviewed Hine to learn his general opinion about book trailers and more specifically, his feelings about the trailer entries. Hine explained: “The Zooppa community is made up of people who are either involved in–or striving toward–careers in the advertising and entertainment industries. Some of the best entries could go directly to a TV or movie screen today and hold their own with more expensively produced work. The great thing about this contest was that the teams knew they had to win a creative contest–there wasn’t a client looking over their shoulder to second-guess or redirect every decision they made. People always talk about ‘thinking outside the box,’ but when it comes to book promotion, the book is the box, and people rarely get to deviate from what is expected based on the content or genre of what has already been created.”