Post to your blog your opinion about book trailers – do they succeed in marketing the books they are trying to promote? Are they useful for readers’ advisory?
The book railer is an awkward format. They emulate the style of blockbuster movie trailers except without a budget and without real actors. Personally I haven't encountered many book trailers. This is because book trailers are unceremoniously flushed out into the vastness of youtube. No one knows they're out there so no one goes looking for them. But there is one book trailer I've seen that made me want to read a book. The trailer for Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land excited me even though I'd fallen out of love with that series. The trailer featured a parade of famous authors reading the first chapter of the book one sentence at a time. It managed to get attention by the pull of the famous authors like Neil Gaiman and Gary Shteyngart who appeared alongside fans of the series. This gave me a communal excitement that I'd lost after the second book in that series had failed to impress me. This proves you don't need a budget to make a successful book trailer (most of the famous people in the video are skyping from couches, beds and boats, production quality was not a concern) all you need is a good idea and the authors words. This article also mentioned the book trailer for Inherent Vice, which featured Thomas Pynchon himself reading from the book. This got a lot of hits, because Pynchon is a recluse and fans wanted to know what he sounds like (it turns out: Jeff Bridges!) I think in order for book trailers to succeed in getting people's attention the people making them need to stop modeling them after movie trailers.
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