In a moment of shamelessness, my editor Julie Crisp asked me to plug the trailer for Alden Bell’s The Reapers Are The Angels. Of course, I was going to anyway, but I wasn’t going to let her know that. Don’t forget to check out my conversation with Alden.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqG6ODZ8ykY]Thoughts on this, or on trailers in general? Have you read the book? If not why not? (And I’m totally not buying “Because it’s not yet published in the UK” as an excuse.)
Where are these things shown? They are always awful, and they always look cheap. This is a high-quality, well-written, intelligent book now with a duff trailer attached. But then all the trailers I’ve ever seen are duff, so no need to worry.
And to add insult to injury they showed Temple’s face (because remember, readers are far too stupid to imagine those things for themselves.)Cut to the zombie, you fools. Too late.
Spoon feed my mind somebody.
Sorry to rant, but I have been told by my doctor’s that it’s good not to hold it all in.
Book trailers aren’t for everyone, I’ll admit. They’re very difficult to get right – not just right, but what do they do? What is their purpose? There seems to be a trend for them, so they must be working in some cases.
Media saturation I suppose is the point of these things, but I question the wisdom of using a medium which could be accused of trying to sell books to people who’d much rather watch a video.
I see an inherent problem there, but perhaps that’s just me.
Trailers for movies make sense, because they’re a visual media and you’re seeing some of the actual film.
Where books are concerned, I do enjoy seeing actual pages from a book, maps, artwork, the index of chapters, or the cover, because those are part of the product I’m actually purchasing. A trailer for a book is just…well, wrong-headed I’d say. Likely they all look cheap because it would be silly to spend very much on something that’s only marginally useful in actually putting the book in the hands of someone who wants it.
I think if you’re already excited about the book and are looking forward to it, it might add to the marketing push but as a starting point, who has no idea of the book or what it might be about, I’d be highly suspect of its usefulness.
E.
I didn’t watch the trailer, but I did buy the ebook. I am not sure what that says about the power of trailers or the power of blogs…