The Book Trailer Manual

Love in the Age of Amazon

Every day, I get a Google Alert listing the posts that day about book trailers. Every day, I look at 5-10 new trailers. And every day, I’m disappointed by the lack of creativity. It’s the same overdone Movie Aesthetic, or worse, the Silent Movie Aesthetic. So, today, I was pleasantly surprised by a trailer with some humor and creativity.

In this spoof on Amazon sales ranking, husband-and-wife authors, John Yunker and Midge Raymond start buying each others’ books to raise the sales rank. And it snowballs! There’s even an interesting cameo (so to speak) in the last few seconds of the video, so, it’s one to watch all the way through.

Great concept, well executed. Humorous. Short (well, it could have been even shorter, my only complaint).

YouTube’s info on the trailer:

A cautionary tale about husband-and-wife authors, “Love in the Time of Amazon.com,” by John Yunker and Midge Raymond.

And a book trailer (of sorts) for The Tourist Trail by John Yunker and Forgetting English by Midge Raymond.

www.TouristTrail.com
www.ForgettingEnglish.com

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Production Note: This trailer was made from video taken on an iPhone.

Less is More: A Trailer with Restraint

ROOM by Emma Donoghue

A five-year-old boy—who’s lived his whole life in a single room—narrates this riveting story of the power of a mother’s love.
Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
For more information, visit: http://www.roomthebook.com

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It’s refreshing to see restraint used in a book trailer. This has a very simple melody, like a music box tinkling and the action is just a boy drawing and coloring a picture of himself and his mother. The text is simple blurbs and a few choice words, written in a child-like font. Simple, spare, minimalistic–whatever you call it, it creates a delicious creepy feel. Definitely different and a winner.

What Librarians Think About Book Trailers

Naomi Bates, librarian at Northwest High School Library in Justin, TX recently surveyed 100 librarians about their usage of book trailers in their school libraries. Bates says, she sent links to the survey to two listservs, the Texas Library Association listserv and the LM_NET listserv. 329 people responded, but only the first 100 responses are included because she was using the free version of the software.

The results are astounding.

This is the first question and the responses.
How effective are book trailers in presenting a book to students?

• Very effective – 66.3%
• Somewhat effective – 33.7%
• Not effective – 1%

That is 99% of librarians surveyed who think trailers are effective. Wow! It’s the first statistics that I’ve seen showing the effectiveness of a trailer. Sure, it’s just with students; but if your book targets them, trailers are a must.

(Note: If you receive our feed by email, this presentation will not embed in email. You’ll need to visit the website to see the whole survey.)

Do you Need a Sound Track?

Well, it’s traditional to use a sound track, of course. But essential? Watch this trailer and see what you think.

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In some ways, the trailer is amateurish. But the cleverly folded paper is interesting. I kept watching the whole way because I wanted to see how the paper folded next. I wish they had made more of the folding and shown us a bit more about that. I would have still read the text, and it would have engaged me a bit more.

So, this one worked because:

• it was short
• there was something visually interesting

Did it work for you?

Nonfiction: Author Interview Intercut with Footage

Booklist Online critiqued this recent book trailer about the book, Columbine.

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What works well here is the way the author interview is intercut with footage of the Columbine tragedy; also, the Cullen talks about how the tragedy affected him and why he had to dig deeper. The overall effect is to entice the reader to open the book about this American tragedy.

Here’s a good example of a YOU-Tube aesthetic book trailer.

Fury by Koren Zailckas

Publisher: Viking Adult (September 7, 2010)

The author of the iconic New York Times bestseller Smashed undertakes a quest to confront her own anger.

In the years following the publication of her landmark memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas stays sober and relegates binge drinking to her past. But a psychological legacy of repression lingers-her sobriety is a loose surface layer atop a hard- packed, unacknowledged rage that wreaks havoc on Koren emotionally and professionally. When a failed relationship leads Koren back to her childhood home, she sinks into emotional crisis-writer’s block, depression, anxiety. Only when she begins to apply her research on a book about anger to the turmoil of her own life does she learn what denial has cost her. The result is a blisteringly honest chronicle of the consequences of anger displaced and the balm of anger discovered. Readers who recognized themselves or someone they love in the pages of Smashed will identify with Koren’s life-altering exploration and the necessity of exposing anger’s origins in order to flourish in love and life as an adult. Combining sophisticated sociological research with a dramatic and deeply personal story that grapples boldly with identity and family, Fury is a dazzling work by a young writer at the height of her powers that is certain to touch a cultural nerve.

Song “What’s In It For Me” by BrakesBrakesBrakes
www.brakesbrakesbrakes.com

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