Book Trailers
Zoe Winter is talking about book trailers over on her blog. Are they necessary for a successful book on the brink of Web 3.0? Should we as authors, accept book trailers as standard in the new publishing landscape? I think it’s obvious how Zoe feels about the matter from her post (heh), and I find her arguments in the comments compelling:
I think if someone likes book trailers, that’s fine. If someone likes making them, that’s fine. I am just annoyed by this creeping attitude that authors somehow “need” a book trailer.
So perhaps I’m reacting against that. If people just saw it as a fun thing to do and a way to get in front of people who also read, but spend a lot of time in youtube, that would be cool.
But it seems like there is an increasing attitude that a book trailer is something you NEED to succeed as an author. And I resent the idea of having to put another thing on my to do list. Especially when it’s absolutely not practical for me. I’m very Type A. I couldn’t make a book trailer that wouldn’t lessen my work and make it look dumb. That’s counterproductive.
I tend to agree with her on all of these points, although I have seen awesome book trailers that made me want to buy the books. Most of them, however, are terrible.
It is NOT sufficient to make a slide show of low-resolution stock photos and set them to public domain music, ESPECIALLY if the accompanying text describes the plot in a trite, hackneyed way. I watched a book trailer just this week that did a brilliant job of displaying exactly why the author in question ended up using a vanity press, and that’s not counting the flaws of the actual video aspects of the preview.
If you’ve taken film classes, if you know you’re good at editing film and can make a live action or animated trailer yourself for little to no cost or have a bunch of film and production friends, if you can “see” the trailer in your mind and know what to do to catch people’s attention, if you’ve won awards for your film-making skills, if you have better software to edit than Windows Movie Maker, and if you have the time to spend on a big project, then go for it.
That rules out AT LEAST 99 percent of you.
Probably you.
Seriously. I’m not kidding.
You are not a special snowflake. If you want your writing to be treated like a profession, then treat your work professionally.
Hey, Persephone, thanks for the shout out! And OMG I SO agree with you about 99% of people should not be making book trailers. I saw an amazing book trailer while researching for this Monday's Indie Reader blog posts (which no surprise are about book trailers, with less of my crazy thrown in), and I found a great book trailer. I mention it here on today's blog:
http://zoewinters.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/book-t...
If I could have something like THAT, I would do a book trailer. But I can't. Unless I paid big money. And I don't have that kind of budget right now. Basically I think book trailers are okay for people with MAJOR skillz or the big dogs with a big budget, and maybe I'll meet a film geek friend who is so geeked out by my work they want to make a book trailer… but… for most indies, it's just going to be fail.
Yeah, that is a great trailer! That's what I mean by professional. Honestly, how many writers have that kind of time or talent? I want to make a slide show, I'll submit a flash add to an ad network. LOL
Yeah, I kind of want a book trailer now. But if I did it I would either make friends with a film geek, or pay someone the big bucks to do it right! And that would be a few years down the road, assuming my sales velocity continues.