Okay, guys. Book trailers. What?
I had never heard of book trailers until I took a publishing class in college. I still don’t entirely understand the concept. Books aren’t movies. Cover blurbs are the book equivalent to trailers. Right?
Am I just old-fashioned? Behind the times? Book trailers just don’t seem to match the medium of entertainment. It’s like smelling an apple to see how an orange will taste.
Help me out, friends. Do you watch book trailers? Do you have a trailer for your book? Do you think it’s a key part of advertising? Does anyone else out there think that the concept is a little odd?
BumblesBooks 
I’ve always thought it was odd too. I can understand a movie trailer based on a book, but not the book itself.
I’m glad I’m not the only one! Thanks for commenting 🙂
It is odd, but it’s a natural outgrowth of a old marketing tool. Whether or not it’s truly effective, like all marketing, is anybody’s guess, but for me, a trailer was fun to make, I learned from the experience, and it doesn’t have to cost a dime. So, my vote is: try it! 🙂
True, I guess it never hurts to try! How did you make yours? Did you have people acting as your characters, or was it just scenes flipping by?
I used Balabolka text-to-speech generator, PowerPoint, MovieMaker, and donated music. Most trailers are very short, but I figured, if folks can enjoy a whole popular song, their attention spans should be able to handle a trailer that tells a story, so mine lasts as long as the whole musical selection. Most trailers are also mute, except for their music, but I think that approach discriminates against the visually impaired, so I did voice-overs. You can see the trailer via my blog, at http://wp.me/P30cCH-4E
Awesome, thanks for sharing your experience!
No, no, no, and yes to your questions. In that order. I’m really not a fan. The first book trailer I saw was just a couple months ago and I was a bit unnerved by it. I’d never heard of one or seen one despite how avid a reader I am.
I hadn’t heard of them either until I took a publishing class and one of our visitors showed us theirs. I thought it was kind of a strange concept, but then forgot about it until I saw another one a couple of days ago. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t see many . . . 🙂
You’ve got me … I’d never heard of them until this post. Is a BT something that appears much as a you-tube snippet?
From context I at first got a flash of a wee page of written words (~!) much as an author’s bait (cover blurb, someone said).
The ones I’ve seen are a lot like movie trailers, where they’ll get people to act as their characters and have music and sometimes a voiceover.
Author’s bait–I’ve never heard it called that before! I like it better than cover blurb. I’ll have to remember that one.
Here to serve, Ma’am~!
Doing a ‘movie trailer’ sounds a wee bit desperate (or narcissistic)? But in the hugely competitive free-for-all that e-pubbing has unleashed I guess anything that works has to be good.