Next month, as part of its Art of the Novella series, Melville House is publishing five classic novellas all with the same name: THE DUEL.

Now all we need is… one great video trailer.

Okay, so we’re a little, ahem, critical of the videos made by the system, most of which are terrible and also not any good. So we’ve decided to try something else: Make you do it.

That’s right, we challenge YOU to make the most awesome book trailer of all time. The winner will receive a full set of all 42 titles in our Art of the Novellas series (a value of $420). Also: underground fame and glory.

The rules:

1. Must be under 3:00 minutes long. It can be hilarious or deadly serious. It can be shot in 3D or drawn in crayon. Sensuround welcome.
2. Include at least one cover from one of The Duels in your video.
3. Must end with the Melville House logo. (Download our logo here.)
4. Copy and paste this text in the YouTube video description:

Five great books, five great writers, one great title. The Duel by Giacomo Casanova, Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Heinrich Von Kleist, and Aleksandr Kuprin. Available now from Melville House Publishing. For more information visit: http://mhpbooks.com/book.php?id=575

5. Once it’s up, submit the URL to [email protected] so we can embed it on our website. Or leave it in the comments section below.
6. The winner will be whomever gets the most YouTube views.
7. The prize will be awarded September 1st.

Naturally, we want to play too. So here’s our first entry:

Bring it on!

Love,

Melville House Publishing

Confused? Questions? Email [email protected]

And here come the submissions:

First up is this entry by professional book video production company, TheGlossary:

And here’s a submission from TTruth20 in Washinton, D.C.

As of this posting, our video still leads the race with 755 views on YouTube, but TheGlossary is gaining fast with 319.