Every year Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, Mich., does "crazy stuff" to promote a few new titles. "Once we had a bachelor auction for a book about personal ads," owner Jill Miner told Shelf Awareness. "Another time we had a cake walk for a cake book. Every year the pressure is on to outdo ourselves."

This year Saturn has come up with an event and a way of spreading the word about it that may outdo previous years' efforts. To promote an appearance by Marisa de los Santos on June 26 for her new novel, Belong to Me (Morrow), which has "an old movie theme," as Miner put it, Saturn is running an ad in four area movie theaters that began early last week and will continue until the event. The ad highlights the event and mentions that the first 50 people who get an event ticket will receive a free movie pass, too. At the event, one person will win a movie premiere party for 25 of their friends in Gaylord Cinema West, the town's movie theater.

At the four theaters, the trailer is running on a total of about 20 screens before every movie during the three-week period. Miner wrote the script and was helped with links by HarperCollins. The people who handle the theaters' ads created the final product. See it here: bigscreenadv.com/customers (user name is marisa, password is santos).

Although the store, like other local retailers and services, regularly runs generic ads at the movies, "It's the first time we've done anything like this," Miner said. "The response has been phenomenal. It took only three days to give away the first 50 event tickets." Beyond that, she said, "even if it doesn't drive people to the event, it creates awareness," especially in the three theaters that are outside Gaylord. "A lot of people have said they've seen the ad."

Miner emphasized that the event flowed from the staff's love of the book, as have other events in past years. "It's one of the reasons we can't plan far ahead," she said. "We're always driven by what the book is about."--John Mutter