To promote her new YA novel, Savvy Girl, Lynn Messina is conducting a videomaking contest. Aspiring promotional filmmakers are invited to create their own 30- to 60-second trailers “with positive messages that empower teen girls to have faith in their own potential and self-worth,” with a panel of judges awarding the creator of the best video a 30-gigabyte camcorder from Panasonic. (There’ll also be an “audience choice” competition for a $50 iTunes gift card.) Contestants can either try their hand at adapting a scene from the first chapter of the novel, about a 17-year-old girl trying to turn an internship at her favorite magazine into a columnist’s gig, or take things in their own “savvy” direction.
Last summer, Megan McCafferty similarly enlisted her readers to summarize the first three novels in her “Jessica Darling” series to celebrate the release of the fourth. And it was just a month or so ago that Josh Kilmer-Purcell compiled fan footage into a wild nighttime soap parody.