I am currently in the final stages of self-publishing Nobility Among Us. The final book cover, internal artwork and manuscript have been approved, and are currently being processed by the printer, after which I will obtain a single copy for final approval before it goes on general sale (most likely in about a month).

Going the self-publishing route means doing all of my own marketing, and my funds are extremely limited. I have an idea for promoting the book via youtube video, but I don’t have the skills or tools to produce something of sufficient quality, I am especially interested in high-quality audio.

So, I would like to announce a youtube video creation contest, with a small cash prize, the overall prize fund being 60 US dollars plus two free copies of the book, the winning videos being used to promote the book.

First prize will be 40 US dollars (or equivalent in other currency on request) via paypal plus a signed copy of Nobility Among Us
Second Prize will be 20 US dollars (or equivalent in other currency on request) via paypal plus a signed copy of Nobility Among Us

If there are a large number of high-quality entries, then there will be a third prize of a signed copy of the book. Paypal payments will be immediate, signed copies will take a week or two to arrive, if the final stage of the printing process goes smoothly.

Contest rules:

1. Contact details must be provided by entrants, i.e. send an email to ben_zwycky@yahoo.co.uk from a valid email address with ‘Nobility Among Us Video Contest’ in the subject. The validity of the email address will be verified by replying to the email with a specific question to be answered. (Contact via Private Message at one of the forums I frequent is an acceptable alternative). Contestants must also provide the email address for their paypal account.

2. The closing date for submitting entries is one month from now, the end of the first week of October (entries received after 7 AM GMT on Monday 7th October 2013 will be ignored).

3. For qualification purposes, the date of an entry is the date on which a link to the completed youtube video is received via the contact method established in 1.

3. The videos must be based on one of two poems from the book:

a. What Makes a Man a Noble?

https://benzwycky.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/what-makes-a-man-a-noble/

which are the words of the main character’s father as he nears death from a degenerative heart condition.

Sample poor-quality audio (which I hope will be improved upon, especially my terrible voice acting 🙂 ):

b. Drums

https://benzwycky.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/drums/

This is a ‘call to battle’ poem given towards the end of the book, it is recited with drum accompaniment at the end of a speech to the defenders of a castle. The castle is about to be assaulted with tanks, jets, helicopters and modern ground troops, which the defending side also has, but in vastly fewer numbers. The poem itself is from a much earlier age, when such technology did not exist.
Sample poor-quality audio (which I hope will be improved upon, e.g with a wider range of better-quality drum sounds and/or additional accompanying drums, better quality wind/flag background sound effects, alternative voice. The wind sound effect file used here is wind.ogg by Black Boe http://www.freesound.org/people/Black%20Boe/sounds/22331/):

Further contextual details for either poem can be provided to entrants on request.

4. The video must be entitled ‘Nobility Among Us: What Makes a Man a Noble?’ or ‘Nobility Among Us: Drums’ respectively and must incorporate a working link to the description page of the book, here:

https://benzwycky.wordpress.com/nobility-among-us/

5. No use of other people’s copyrighted material without their permmission.

6. By entering the contest, you are granting me permission to use your entry to promote the book.

Any questions?