As the traditional book promotion methods have begun to lose their audience appeal, enterprising authors and publishers must begin thinking outside the box to get the word out about a new release. Here’s one author’s solution which has been working for nearly a year and getting stronger, instead of weaker, with the passage of time.

What started off a year ago as a personal Internet experiment for David Ho, a California engineer, has become cyberspace’s equivalent of television’s road to fame shows such as “American Idol.” For R. Troyan Krause, former Philadelphia lawyer turned author, Ho’s “Game To Fame” experiment has successfully become a unique vehicle for the exposure and sale of his first romantic suspense novel, The Works of the Flesh, which is set in Philadelphia.

In the late spring 2003 Troy Krause had just completed a promotional tour following his book’s release and was surfing the web for new ideas or opportunities to get the word out about his book. As Krause puts it, “It’s tough for new authors to make a name for themselves unless, for example, you’re a Hillary with perhaps a story about a boy named Bill. It took best selling author John Grisham two tries. He sold his first book out of the trunk of his car.” It was during Krause’s search that he stumbled on to Ho’s new site.

Ho is one of the survivors of Internet start-ups. His new site asked, “Want fame and exposure? Seems like a lot of people do. Lately, I've been seeing on TV (American Idol, Survivor, Fear Factor, etc.) where legions of talented people try to enter into these televised contests in an attempt to gain fame and fortune. Whether you like these shows or not, there's no denying their popularity. Millions of people enjoy watching them and because millions watch, the contestants on the show get tremendous exposure. The end result is that they become widely known. In other words, they become famous. The fortune follows shortly afterward.”

Ho saw a problem though. “Seeing those long audition lines, it seems to me that a lot of people are saying: ‘I have talent and I want to be famous, but how do I get started?’ And the answer for many of them is to enter into some kind of contest or reality game show. While there's nothing wrong with that, there is a problem. The problem is that only a very few people get a chance to play. The vast majority of hopefuls are turned away to languish in obscurity until the next open-call. Sadly, but realistically, most people will never get a chance to play.”

Ho also saw a solution. “Life may not be fair, but is that the way it has to be? If being famous simply means that your name and picture is widely recognized by millions of people, shouldn't we be able to use the Internet to give everyone a chance to play for fame? So I created this Internet game as an attempt to see if the Internet could make unknown people famous. I'd like to see if I can help make at least one person famous from the collective activity of everyone playing the game.”

Krause took the bait. "I’m a reader. Because I’m also an author, I’d like to think that there are hundreds of thousands of other readers too, and one day they’d all visit the ‘Game To Fame’ site, either by accident or design, and learn about my book.” Following the rules, he posted a photo and a one paragraph blurb about his book referring to its good reviews. Then he waited for “votes” which are generated by visits to his page at the Game.

Now nearly a year later, the ‘Game To Fame’ has over 1500 contestants. Author Krause is solidly in second place, a position he has held for several months. The Game has attracted other authors, many of whom Krause invited to join. Entertainers, models, and folks from many other walks of life are also playing. This week Ho announced that his experiment has been brought under a corporate umbrella, and the first contest will close on March 15th when a Grand Prize winner will be voted upon at that time by all the contestants. Those eligible for the Grand Prize will be the top five contestants based on votes received and four “wild card” contestants chosen by Ho based on who he feels have played the Game with the right spirit, but could not make it into the Top 5 for one reason or another.

The Grand Prize will include round trip airfare to Los Angeles, a stay at the posh Le Meridien Hotel in Beverly Hills near Rodeo Drive and meetings with talent agents. How does Krause feel about his chances?

“That’s anybody’s guess. Let me just say that the trunk of my car is still just for a spare tire. So the Game has spared me the experience that Grisham went through. In fact, it has done even more than that for me. Aside from decent exposure, I’ve made some new friends among the contestants – people who I would never have otherwise met. They are, for example, the young folks at the early stages of their acting careers with some important movie and TV credits already. I’m sure that the talent agents would much rather be looking at their faces instead of mine, and I can’t say that I blame them.”

The “Game to Fame” web site address is www.gametofame.net. Krause’s author web site address is www.rtroyankrause.com.