Book Trailers® win Davey Awards

Of the over 3500 commercials sent in from all over the world, Circle of Seven Productions walked away with an award for every entry they submitted. The small, specialty production company has put book video in the forefront of the entertainment industry with four International Davey Awards.

The Davey Awards are judged by the International Academy of Visual Arts (IAVA) and honors the finest creative works from small businesses around the world.  IAVA represents acclaimed media and advertising firms such as: Yahoo!, Wired, MTV, MySpace, The Ellen Degeneres Show, HBO, ADWEEK and many others.  The award competition was sponsored by The Creative Group, ADWEEK, Fortune Small Business Magazine and OnRequest.

“We’re thrilled that all of our commercials won something!” says Circle of Seven Productions CEO Sheila Clover English. “We hope this will help bring the public’s attention to an exciting new advertising medium for the literary world.” Circle of Seven Productions was instrumental in bringing the idea of using video to sell books.  They create Book Trailers®, which look like movie trailers, but give consumers a synopsis of the book. “We hope to do for books what music videos did for the music industry.” says English.

The Book Trailers®, which played as television commercials, were also distributed extensively online, and with fantastic results. Christine Feehan’s novel, Dark Demon, debuted at #2 on the NY Times list and Douglas Clegg’s novel, The Priest of Blood, brought him to his first NY Times listing. The third commercial was a novel by Stephanie Rowe’s Date Me, Baby, One More Time, whose book did well enough that her publisher encouraged her to do a second video for her follow up novel, Must Love Dragons, which was just released.

Dark Demon won a Gold Award for special effects and a Silver Award for its screenplay. The Priest of Blood won a Silver Award for special effects and Date Me, Baby, One More Time won a Silver Award for excellence in a low-budget commercial.

In 2005, Circle of Seven Productions won a Telly Award for their Book Trailer®, Mind Game, a novel by Christine Feehan.

“Books are making a come back and are competing in a huge way for the entertainment dollar,” says English. “It’s exciting to think that books have found a way into entertainment on a level with video games, music video and movies.”

The other leaders in the book video business, ExpandedBooks and VidLit, will be joining Circle of Seven Productions at Book Expo of America, the publishing industry’s premier event, in June of 2007. The three top book video makers will be discussing the future of book video marketing and distribution.

“Book video as a marketing tool can change the book industry,” says English. “It not only offers a “Try before you buy” opportunity for consumers, but it has reached out to the MySpace generation using a medium they respond to- video.” With Circle of Seven Productions putting book video on television, in movie theaters, on the Internet, and now winning several international awards, Book Trailers® could easily become a household name in 2007.