Check out this awesome book trailer:
First of all, this was one of my favorite books of 2010. Second of all, this book trailer is just perfect. It's what all other book trailers should be. Not cheesy. Not long. Just very professional and totally the right tone for the book. This is the kind of trailer I'd love to create for all my future books. If you haven't already read A Tale Dark and Grim, you should. (Thanks to Betsy Bird for the link!)
This trailer got me thinking, though. How much money should you spend to make a book trailer? Who actually watches them? How do you distribute them? Do they have any impact on sales? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm very curious. I'm even curious about whether or not you even like this trailer. Is it only me? If you have any thoughts on this topic, please feel free to comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I do think this book trailer is awesome. I'm also 99.9% positive it was paid for by the publisher, not the author. Nice if you can get it, right? :-)
I was thinking about book trailers yesterday, and how overall I feel very "meh" about them. I think that most of them are incredibly boring and overlong. I think the most successful ones are those that are quick and entertaining and offer some value beyond simply blurbing the book (e.g., a clever, amusing animation as with A Tale Dark and Grimm).
Because, let's face it, if I just want the book blurb it's way easier to read it than load and watch a 2-minute video of it, especially when said video is probably (based on most of what I've seen) full of stock photography and the "Ken Burns effect." I've seen some down-right laughable trailers like that... but I feel bad laughing knowing that in some cases authors throw down hundreds of dollars for a video that -- two years later -- has still only gotten 100 views on YouTube.
The more memorable videos I've seen aren't even for books themselves -- e.g., Jackson Pearce's music videos, John Green's vlog...
I know what you mean, Lisa. I made a few trailers for Jemma Hartman. I have no idea if they resulted in any sales, but I play one of them at my school visits, and the kids love it. So it's a fun add-on for an author visit.
Yours are actually some of the more memorable book trailers I've seen precisely because they were a little bit different! Live action instead of still images, actually talking to people instead of cheesy voice-overs, etc....
Thanks Lisa. If I could do it again, though, I'd make them shorter and with higher quality video and sound.
Love this trailer! It's short and striking, and yet still manages to capture the tone of the book without yammering on too much. (Which I must admit I did in the one book trailer I made).
But I agree with Lisa in that your book trailer, Brenda, was really effective, and a good example of what an author can do besides posting some jacked up Powerpoint presentation onto YouTube.
-- Laura
Post a Comment