the blog of author, illustrator and designer Kris Waldherr » Publishing Monday: Book trailers

03.16

Publishing Monday: Book trailers – effective or just fun?

Those of you who read my post from Friday now know the full extent of my obsession with video making. (My thanks to all those who suffered through my “you gotta watch this” e-mails, and offered suggestions and critiques.) Fortunately, I’ve “wrapped” my latest Doomed Queens book video. Now I can move back to working on my new book proposal without further distractions — at least until the next inspiration/distraction hits.

Watch “Good Queen” here. Watch the other videos here.

To educate myself while I was working on the Doomed Queens videos, I checked out other book trailer videos. These days, it seems like book trailers are de rigeur for just about every book that gets published, from small print-on-demand operations to major publishers. The production values for these trailers ranged from extremely basic to cinematic pieces that must have cost mucho dinero to bring into being.

Most of the videos posted on Blazing Trailers presented a basic treatment for book trailers: A bunch of stock photos or video set to music, with the flap copy superimposed as text. Not the most effective or impressive book videos I’ve seen. Watch a sample video here.

In terms of satirical fun, it’s hard to beat the trailer created to promote Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament. Watch “Necrobufrin: The Key to a Better Death” trailer here.

For cinematic scope and atmosphere, watch the Blood and Ice trailer here. One can already smell the popcorn.

Somewhere in between these high and low extremes, Carlyn Becchia created a simple but haunting animated trailer for her award-winning book, The Raucous Royals. Watch it here.

Fun as these book trailers may be, I wonder how effective they are in driving book sales, even when a video goes viral. I’m still out on that one — I’d love to see one of my videos get that popular, so I can find out first hand. But what do you think?

One example: Quirk Books released a video for their upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.* It quickly bombarded the internet. Compared to the trailers for Breathers and Blood and Ice, it has fairly simple production values — lots of Keira Knightly over Mozart with a surprise twist. (I’ve just searched for it to provide a link, but only found it on Facebook. Wonder if the video got pulled for copyright infringement, though I would assume Quirk had cleared the rights to use those movie stills.) It will be interesting to see what happens with sales once P & P & Z is officially released later this month.

I suspect much depends on how well the book is written — if it’s a good read, people will buy. After all, remember what happened when Snakes on a Plane came to a theatre near you: Viral video became box office bust. Ultimately, a good catch phrase — and Youtube trailer — can only go so far.

Are there any other book videos out there that you think are especially effective? Or surprisingly bad? In either case, I hope you’ll post links to these examples in my comments.

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*Side note: What it says about our zeitgeist that we’re become so obsessed with zombies these days? That we feel hopelessly trapped in undeath/economic stagnation? Hmmmm…..

comments

Sheila Clover English wrote on March 17, 2009 at 7:27 pm:

Book videos are indeed effective, when you predetermine the goal of the video and stay on task to obtaining that goal.

Everyone wants to sell books. But, book videos is not the most effective way to bring in sales. It happens, but not as effective as some other forms of advertising.

Book videos are about reach, brand, name recognition, media awareness and other specific goals. Selling is actually a byproduct.

There’s no “quick fix marketing”. It’s all strategy and perseverance. Some videos, such as Christine Feehan’s video for Turbulent Sea, can take on a life of their own and bring in hundreds of thousands of views. But, what was more important than the views themselves or even the residual sales, was WHO took interest in the author’s books because of the video.

Authors should not be creating video just to let their established fans have a new way to see that the book is coming or out. Book video should be bringing in NEW readers to your website or bringing a new awareness to your name, series or book.

And of course nothing is better than a book that is well written. Even the best video can’t sell a book that’s not good. It may sell well at the beginning, but word of mouth will kill sales if the word is that the book is terrible.

Great blog! Thank you for allowing me to participate!

Jane Kennedy Sutton wrote on March 18, 2009 at 8:16 am:

Really enjoyed the Good Queen book teaser. I Think you did an excellent job.

Jane Kennedy Sutton
http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/

kriswaldherr wrote on March 18, 2009 at 8:17 am:

Thanks, Sheila, for your comment! Great information. I like what you wrote about strategy and perseverance — so true. Also, a publicist mentioned to me that author websites and videos and such should be pitched/accessible toward new fans as well as established followers. Otherwise you’re just preaching to the choir.

That’s interesting what you wrote about the difficulties quantifying book sales as a result of book videos. I’ve heard that from other quarters as well.

Ultimately, even the best video is all for naught unless the book is a great read. I do wonder, though, if a bad video can do a good book harm by turning off potential new readers.

Thanks, Jane, for your kind words. I know I have a lot to learn in making videos, but the process is fun. I love that I can make one in a few days. So different from a book, which can take years!

Sibylla wrote on July 19, 2009 at 1:12 pm:

I like the idea of book trailers but rarely do I see any. I think in order for them to be effective, not only do they need to go viral but they need to be placed on sites that aren’t necessarily book sites. I’m an avid reader but I’m not searching book sites all the time. If they’re advertised on blogs/sites with similar subject matter, I think it would get the word out more and reach a wider audience.

Publishing Monday: Book trailers – effective or just fun?

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