It’s inevitable that, as an author, you often get informed of book trailers for a release from one of your writing buddies or peers. I’ve watched quite a few of them and they’re well done. The problem I’m facing though is, do book trailers work for SFR?
The elements of a book trailer involve (of course) the main protagonists. There is also a variety of mood shots to set the scene, not to mention the ever-important music. It takes time, skill and a good sense of pacing to put together a good book trailer, and the authors and people who do it have my complete respect. It’s just…. I dunno…. I mean….
How do you portray the science and worlds that we’re building? Should we? If we do, are the stock images of beakers and bubbling retorts enough to give the picture, or are we being lazy in resorting to stereotype? What if the alien species we’ve created only exists in our heads and there is no photo of a Lxulzianian Swilltwik (much less one in the pose we want!) in any of the photo stock libraries we’ve perused.
I can see how you can easily immerse your watcher in an historical world — the costumes, the music. But what about an interplanetary invasion? Just to take one example, the geeks among us know that we can’t hear explosions in space, so do we keep such a scene silent and remain true to the science or do we cave in to Hollywood hype and put in sound effects? And let’s not even mention costumes or ships. Is it enough to stick in an image from Hubble to differentiate your SFR from someone else’s rom suspense? Do SFR trailers even work?
What do you think? Use them? Don’t?
ADDITIONAL: My good friend, Maria Zannini, is having a competition at her blog. Know a good blog that needs a shout-out? If you do, go here for more details.
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I am not a big fan of book trailers. I have never been swayed by a trailer to buy a book–but I have been entertained and intrigued enough to learn more about the author when I come across a good one.
I know. Not much help.
I may or may not be typical of your readership. Can’t say I’ve ever watched more than about 5 seconds of a book trailer. I can remember hitting play, once, on one of Krentz’s. and then immediately killing the video player because it annoyed me.
I gather that writers and romance writers are making them frequently, and watching each others’ (because everyone’s blogging about them). But do any readers actually find a book trailer, watch it, and then buy the book? If they watch after buying, it doesn’t count…
But then, I also prefer to read the book before seeing the movie, so unless your book trailer is a video clip of someone reading your book, it wouldn’t appeal in the least…
Good luck if you make one, and may it go viral and net you 1000′s of sales
For me, I’m still planning to buy it without a video.
Riiiiiggghhhttt. As a reader, I really don’t care for book trailers and, in fact, if they’re not that well done, I tend to strike the author off my list completely. I mean, I have so many books to read and only limited time. So I’m with both of you.
However, there’s no doubt that, on the author side of the camp, there’s a lot of pressure to produce them and, in this crowded marketplace, anything that makes one author stand out from another is a good thing.
I don’t know. I’m still on the fence about the topic. I’ll probably recycle this topic next year ‘cos I doubt I would have reached a firm decision by then! LOL
And thanks for your vote of confidence, Kristi!Much appreciated.