If you are an unknown, first-time author with a limited marketing budget, how can you generate awareness for your book and make it stand out? My good friend (and first-time published author) Jean Marie Pierson was facing that very dilemma with her new book, "No Good Girls". Well, it turns out that she originally wrote the book as a screenplay, so she came up with the idea of taking the first few pages of the screenplay and making a book "trailer".
Enlisting the help of friends, she was able to put together a DIY crew to film, direct, act, play extras, edit the video, provide music, and secure a location for the shoot.
As Jean puts it:
What you see in the trailer you call follow along in the book as pages 5-10 of No Good Girls are the first 5 pages of the original screenplay. For people who are not used to reading screenplays, I thought filming it would be a wonderful compliment to the book as it would act like a bonus feature much the same way interviews are bonus features to DVDs. But the scene itself, which may seem like an introduction to the characters is really a foreshadowing tool for the story. Meaning, pay close attention to what each character says as you might see it happen in the book.
You can check out the finished trailer below (look closely for yours truly who makes a "cameo" around :25 into it!):
Congratulations to Jean (as well as another good friend of mine, Mark Kaufmann, who directed and edited the video). Now buy the book! 
Related Links:
No Good Girls Website
No Good Girls (Amazon.com)
No Good Girls Book Trailer (YouTube)
No Good Girls Book and Trailer - The Making-Of
