Finally, a Book Trailer I Like!

fully agree, most book trailers either a) are too much like a videotaped live reading or b) try too hard to be like a hollywood film trailer. othmer, unsurprisingly, has done something completely inventive and different.

. . . yeah, ninety-five percent of the time i feel like book trailers diminish the book they are attempting to publicize . . . there's just something sort of sad and apologetic about book trailers in general . . .as though being a book isn't enough– people gotta' have images! i dig this one . . .

Thanks for sharing this. Not sure what makes a good trailer, or what's the right way to do book promos, other than it's probably better to not think of them as trailers or promos. This came from a reading this spring, where I paraphrased the intro. Afterward, several people came up to me and said, "that should be your trailer." Next I started begging favors: an art director to shoot/edit/make it pretty, my nephew the commercial music composer for the sound design, and an ex-colleague, Tracy Spinney, lent his professional chops to the VO. My opinion is that creating content around a book — filmed, written, with shadow puppets; funny, smart, whatever — will do much more for a book than any traditional ad. The production value doesn't have to be high quality, but the idea should.

Now I feel guilty for making a book trailer for my first book when I should have come up something more creative.

Hey Anon, Whatever works. I've seen some really interesting trailers and a lot of dogs. I tried some things for The Futurist that, in retrospect, wasn't the best use of my limited promotional resources. It's important that someone wants to get your book after seeing a promo, but perhaps more important is that they want to share it with others. Which comes back to content vs. selling. I share interesting content with friends but never ads.

It would be funny if we had something like a pimping award for book trailers. Maybe a small statue of a dude in fur coat, long cigarette, shady hat, and platform shoes, sweet lookin' big sunglasses, a coke spoon necklace, book slappin' hand upraised and at ready. (I was the Anon guy. My mouse slipped when I clicked on that. Sorry.)

This blog made me rethink my approach in making a book trailer for my book. It seems that Jon Evison is right about putting book's images on film-that there is something sad and apologetic about it. I need to approach it as if I was selling a book, not a future film, something that Stephen King would admonish a writer about. He claimed that when he sits down to write a book, he avoids thinking about the money AND thinking 'gee, I bet that would make a great movie.' Now I am inspired to try and take a different approach and start over with a different idea for my book trailer.