Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Value of Book Trailers?

I have to admit...  I am easily distracted.  Some days it is very difficult for me to read at work because people stop by my cube, emails come in, etc.  I can get totally lost looking and giggling at lolcats.  My newest distraction today... book trailers.




Perhaps I am missing something...  do book trailers work?  How do they get out to the readers?  I found this Sholes and Moore trailer by searching Lynn Sholes.  It seems to me the reader has to actively search for an author's work.  What am I missing?  I suppose they are on an author's website as well.  Can they be uploaded to Amazon?  Do indie stores post trailers on their websites?

I think book trailers are fun.  :)  It's interesting to me what elements an author chooses to highlight, the music selection, if the author uses images of the characters or not... 

Authors - have you seen a positive impact because of book trailers? 

Readers - has seeing a trailer cause you to go out and buy a book?  Or made you not buy one?

3 comments:

Lois Winston said...

Terri, I'd be very surprised to learn that book trailers have been responsible for many readers buying a book. Many are enjoyable to watch, though, and if an author has one on her website or blog, I'll usually take a look. I don't think that authors should feel pressured into making trailers, and I cringe when I see how much money many authors have spent on them. I've made trailers for my last two books, but I didn't hire anyone. I did them myself, using Power Point and inexpensive stock photos and music. My trailers each ran under $25. I know authors who have spent several thousand dollars hiring professionals to make trailers for their books. I don't believe it's money well spent or that the authors have recouped the cost in greater sales of their books.

Jon The Crime Spree Guy said...

I think money spent on book trailers would be much better spent buying beer for your editor.

Cricket McRae said...

I've made book trailers for each of my books using animoto.com. It cost $3 each (now it's $5, I believe). I use free stock photos for the most part. Then you have the option to post it several places -- YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. plus each goes on its respective book page on my website. There are also a couple of sites devoted to posting book trailers. Here is a list of them:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32688439/Mark-Sheldon%E2%80%99s-List-of-Book-Trailer-Sites