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