5 Top Book Trailer Misconceptions part One

Part One: It’s a Passing Phase

There are some neigh Sayers who think that book trailers are just a flash in the pan and that in ten years the whole thing will have blown over and the publishing industry will revert back to what it was before. How did people react when the first illustration was put into a book? Book trailers have carved out the new potential in digital book marketing, as well as an opportunity for cross-media collaboration, given the rising quality and attention book trailers are now getting, it’s very hard to see them going away anytime soon. There have been fantastic book trailers made for books are written by TC Boyle, Elizabeth Gilbert, JJ Abrams, James Franco, and John Hodges, book trailers starring celebrities such as Paul Dano, Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari and the other members of Parks and Recreation, Zach Galifianakis, and Paul Giamatti. There is even a music video book trailer collaboration between Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars for The Hunger Games soundtrack.

The Young Adult crowd has grown up with the internet, both at home and in the classroom. Teachers now show book trailers in class as a way to spark discussion on a novel, and even assign students to make their own book trailers inspired by what they have read! Needless to say, the strongest market for book trailers at the moment is with Young Adults. But the young have a bad habit of not staying young forever. As these readers age, they won’t suddenly grow out of book trailers. In ten years’ time, it stands to follow that book trailers for all age ranges will be seen as a standard marketing practice. When a book trailer is made, it immediately creates a cross-media collaboration. The book’s story on the written page has now been drawn out, represented in an audio-visual fashion on a digital platform that can be accessed from millions of electronic devices around the world. Concepts and ideas are now being thrown through a variety of different artistic mediums, each with their own strengths and weaknesses that add depth and nuance to the original story. Cross-media collaboration is a new and exciting aspect of literature. It can start with a book and a book trailer, and lead to so much more.

Naturally, publishers have created many not-so-fantastic book trailers for their high profile authors such as Dan Brown, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz using flashy text, stock images, or low-quality video. The only thing that is going to go out fashion for certain are these poorly made book trailers, falling to the wayside as the prototypes of the more fully realized, cinematic style. Because in reality, the only new concept about a cinematic book trailer is that it aims to promote a book. People already enjoy short films, viral videos, and book-to-film adaptations of great stories. None of these forms are passing trends. The book trailer, when done right, puts the best aspects of these visual formats into one medium in an effort to get people excited about the written word. When created with these intentions, it becomes hard to believe that book trailers are just another fad, soon to be forgotten. The book trailer isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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