Book Trailers: Awkward Authors or Works of Art?

Book trailers have been around for almost ten years now, but they don't seem to create the amount of 'buzz' they are supposed to. This isn't stopping the publishers, though, as we see more and more book trailers popping up on the internet.

If you compare these book trailers to the ones we see in the cinema, you start to wonder why authors and publishers still even try. Creating a trailer for a film seems easy enough. You try to pique the interest of the viewer by showing them the most interesting parts of the story, by using the most visually attractive images you can have in your movie. You can't do this with a book, because there are no images. You will need to start from scratch and create a visual world for a textual medium, and as we all know from various movie adaptations, this doesn't always get it right. Before I wrote this article it seemed wise to research the subject and watch as many book trailers I could find. I learned that book trailers are no exception to the adaptation rule. A good example of this is the book trailer for Joseph Finder's Power Play, which makes the book look like a corporate version of Die Hard without the great one liners by Bruce Willis.

Instead of making me interested in reading this book it actually turned me off of it. Mind you, this was not a book trailer for a vanity writer who thought it would be 'fun' to also produce a trailer with his friends. Finder has written eleven novels, won several International Thriller Awards and is frequently reviewed in the New York Times. I'll admit that the New York Times isn't the penultimate authority when it comes the quality of books and their review of this particular one wasn't exactly raving, but it does mean that Joseph Finder is a serious writer, with serious writing credit.

Luckily there are also a lot of fun, interesting and above all good book trailers. An example I personally like is Packing for Mars: SpaceHygiene, a book by Mary Roach that tries to answer strange questions about going into space.

This trailer is quirky, funny and gives you a sense of the content of the book without giving away the entire story. Because Packing for Mars is a non-fiction work, not giving away the story doesn't seem particularly hard. When you create a trailer for a novel, however, this gets more difficult. A trailer shouldn't give you the feeling that you already know how the story is going to unfold. If that is the case, why would you need to read the book? An example of a trailer for a work of fiction that doesn't do this, is the trailer for A Super Sad True Love Story.

Instead of focusing on the story, it focuses on the author. They briefly explain what the book is about, but nothing is given away. Instead of conveying a story, it conveys an overall feeling that you can expect to find in the book. It conveys the style of the author, stating that if you enjoyed this trailer, you will enjoy this writer. Besides the funny tone of the trailer, it also uses so-called 'star power' by inserting famous actors and authors like James Franco and Jeffrey Eugenides, proving that even the literary world isn't impervious to using celebrities for advertisement. These author-oriented trailers don't always work as well as this one though and sometimes you end up with the author awkwardly talking about his book and the act of reading (yes, I'm talking about you Jonathan Franzen)

There are many more examples of good and bad trailers, but the ultimate question from a marketing point of view is in the end, do they work? Is it worth it for a publisher to spent his valuable time and money on a book trailer? This question doesn't have an easy answer. With every marketing tool it is difficult to point out if it actually influences sales or not if your customers don't specifically tell you. The only way to find out if they actually work is to ask every single person who buys a book if they saw the trailer and if this was the reason they bought it.

In 2008 The Wall Street Journal has tried to assess the effect of creating trailers on book sales. They came to the conclusion that 'there is scant evidence […] that the average book trailer has much impact on sales'. There haven't been more recent studies on this, which is a shame, because it would be interesting to see if this changed in the growing world of e-books.

Many publishers keep returning to the keywords 'creating a buzz'. The objective is to make people talk about the book and recognize it when they're browsing their bookshop. I said at the start though, that this 'buzz' doesn't really seem to exist. Many people haven't even heard of book-trailers and if they have, they don't seem to notice them.

An interesting take on book trailers comes from filmmakers Scott Thrift and Ari Kuschnir. Rather than seeing the trailer as a way to market a book, they approach it as a work of art on its own. Something to be a companion to the book, rather than a mere representation of it. Their own attempt at making a trailer for the supernatural thriller Blood and Ice is actually very impressive. 

It gives a small hint of what the story is about, but it mostly creates an eerie atmosphere. The clip is intriguing even if you even you don't know it's about a book. After watching many trailers I have to admit that I agree with them. My favourite trailers are the ones that don't give away the story, but create an extra dimension. They give an impression of the author and of the general atmosphere of the book. A trailer that is an artwork of its own, something remarkable and interesting, will definitely create that 'buzz' everybody keeps talking about.

Kidnapping Ideas 2: The Emma Edition

Soon I Will Be Invincible

Ok, I know I’ve tweeted about this already, but I just can’t not mention it. I’ve read Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman and it was great! I bought the book because I had read The Magicians by Lev Grossman (they’re brothers) which I loved and counting on the writing gene to run in the family, I gave it a try. Soon I will be Invincible is a book about a world where superheroes and super villains are a ‘common’ thing. It’s a sort deconstruction of the superhero/comic genre, written in witty prose and funny remarks. The book is well written and just so much fun to read. I listened to The Sound of Young America Podcast with Austin Grossman (I know, I’m such a geek) and he made a really cool point about how he could explore different things in his ‘comic-novel’ that he wouldn’t be able to do with a real comic book. In a novel you get to spend so much more time in the main characters head, so you can explore the things that are taken for granted in comics, like why they wear the costumes they wear, what it feels like to have a body that is half made of metal and what the difficulties are of wearing a really heavy velvet cape. It’s really interesting to see how they deal with all these crazy things, which adds a more human aspect to the godlike feeling most superheroes/-villains usually have.

Before this, I hadn’t read a book in a while, because I was going through an insatiable craving for magazines. I rediscovered the fun of buying and reading them not too long ago and it took up most of my free time. My interest in magazines has wavered a bit, which is a good thing, because now it won’t get to the point where I have to eat dry bread because I can’t afford a simple slice of cheese. I would love to write a superhero story one day. I love the epicness of the battles, the drama of being different and the great love stories. It’s a shame I can’t even draw a simple stickfigure, but otherwise I would’ve definitely gone into the comic business.

Emma Forrest

This month’s British Elle contained an article from Emma Forrest (I love her name!) about how it feels to leave your twenties. Emma herself was 15 when her first article was published and 16 when she got a column in the Sunday Times. In the article she writes about what it was like to grow up in the limelight and how much better she felt after turning 25. It ended with an anecdote about herself and her friend Kat Dennings (which you might know from the movie Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) attending an Oscar-seasoned party where Emma ran into an old ex-boyfriend.

‘As I talked to him, I processed that some things do not change at all as you get older. Heartbreak now was just like the heartbreak I’s felt when I was 19, then 25; and now I was 30 and it was the same heart, the same ache. Really, my heart felt like vinyl that  had been scratched so it would always jump in that song. Kat sensed the awful, quivering moment when I was about to lose it. She marched me to the bathroom under the pretext of needing to tell me something, and before we made it past the swing door I was crying. She handed me a stiff drink. She dug a false eyelash from my cleavage when it skied there on my tears. But I couldn’t stop. ‘I’m just too old for this,’ I wailed. Then someone walked in and the evening took a strange and beautiful turn. ‘You don’t remember?’Kat asked the next morning.

‘Oh my god…’

‘Yes. And then Demi Moore hugged you.’ Neither of us had ever met her before or since. ‘She clutched you to her bosom and stroked your hair.’

‘Oh God, Kat! She did!’

‘And she kept saying, “Everything’s going to be fine, everything is going to be fine.”

And it is.

I was having a bad day while I read this, and for some reason this anecdote was so reassuring that I felt better in an instant. I’d wish we all had a Demi Moore walking around to give us a hug when we feel bad!

Her latest book is a memoir called It’s Your Voice in My Head and if it contains more of these reassuring stories, I’ll definitely love it.

Get back in your book

The last ‘idea’ I want to share with you are some really pretty pictures I found on But, Honestly, a blog by Emma Fourie (I guess I have a theme, with these Emma’s). She posted some pictures from Lissy Elle which are really impressive. I started browsing her Flickr Page and found a collection of pictures called ‘Get back in your book’. They are about ‘a collection of characters who strive to stay in the real world’. I’m a sucker for anything literary so I couldn’t help but like them! Be sure to look around on her page, there is a lot more to see.

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter

Wendy - Peter Pan

Beauty and the Beast

The concept reminded me of the first issue of Afterzine, where six style bloggers where asked to create a look based on their favorite book, character or cover. I thought it was fun how most of them picked a book by Haruki Murakami, I guess he’s just a very fashionable writer. If you don’t own Afterzine yet, I really urge you to buy it. It’s filled with amazing pictures, illustrations and stories. If only I could write for them! But if you do already own it, a little bird recently told me a second issue will appear around spring this year… Can’t wait! 

Kidnapping Ideas

Sometimes I read something in a book or a magazine and it makes me wish I had come up with that myself or it makes me think I should use that idea somehow. My last post about collecting was something like that, but that wasn’t all I found. I decided to relay all the cool ideas I found that inspired me somehow, so that they might be able to inspire you as well!

The Pen Society

I’m reading The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami right now. It’s a collection of short stories and there was one in there that I particularly liked. The story is called a Window and it’s about a young man who works for a small company called ‘The Pen society’. His job is called ‘Pen Master’ and he has to respond to the letters send by the members of the society. The members are mostly people wanting to learn how to write letters or people wanting some company through the mail. I thought this sounded like a great job, that I would love to have. Also it's just great fun to receive letters all the time! 

The story went on from there off course, but the idea stuck with me and I think it would be a nice idea for a company. I’m just not sure if there is a market out there for something like this. It will help the mailmen so they might be willing to finance my business proposal... 

The picture comes from a project called Mail me Art where amateurs and professionals could send in their artwork through the mail. The entries were put together in a exhibition and also a book, which is another cool idea! I love how a lot of projects nowadays try to incorporate their audience. It makes for really interesting collaborations.

The Neurotic Women's club 

Oh comely magazine (which is one of my favourite magazines) had a really cool article about women living alone written by Ellie Phillips. The Neurotic Women’s club is about women suffering from the Bridget Jones fear that ‘you will die alone, and be found three weeks later half-eaten by alsatians’. Although I had no idea what Alsatians where (they’re dogs) and I do not live alone, I understand the fear because I live in a constant state of healthy paranoia. The women in the club have made the agreement to text each other every day around a certain time to let them know they are still alive. You get a sort of buddy that you'll text the word ‘Alive’ and that will text you back the word ‘Yey’ (I assume other words could also be appropriate, but I really liked the ones she described). If you don’t hear anything from that person during that time, you’ll know something has happened and you ‘go around their flat and you break the door down’. I’m not sure if I should use it with friends of family, but I like the idea of checking in with everyone, knowing they’re ok. 
These were the ideas I liked this week. If I find some more, I'll post them!