First there was Vidlit. Then there were Book trailers. Now the Book Standard is going a step further with their Book Video Awards, and Back Stage's Nicole Kristal finds out more about this new venture. "Book videos will use a dramatic visual story line, much like a movie trailer, to lure online viewers and cell-phone users to buy the advertised book and find out what happens next," said VNU Business Media's Kelly Roman.

Specifically, the contest will pit film students from schools such as Northwestern, Columbia, UT Austin and North Carolina School of the Arts, all of whom will endeavor to make 30-second streaming video clips based on three upcoming spring releases from Bantam Dell: Richard Doetsch's The Thieves in Heaven, Alex Masters's Stuart, A Life Backwards and Cody McFaden's Shadowman.

The contest may not just benefit aspiring filmmakers, but actors, too. "If an actor's in a book video that produces a best-selling book, then that actor's going to be in demand and can probably parlay that into doing other book videos." Roman further adds that "if the medium takes off the budgets for book videos will increase to anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000, and the length of the videos will grow to a minute and a half. Once that occurs, union actors will be cast in the videos."

It remains to be seen how popular the format might be for books, but considering how nebulous marketing tricks are, this seems, if not cool, at least stylistically flashy...