Monster Needs to Stay Awake for His Book Trailer!

As technology and media continue to change, so does our ability to utilize our creative outlets in fun and interesting ways. One of the coolest trends to jump out of the publishing industry over the last few years has been the book trailer. Feature films shouldn't have all the fun, right?

At first, the concept seemed like kind of a snooze to me. A trailer? For a book? Sounds pretty boring. I mean, books don't move, they don't dance, they don't sing--well, most books anyway. What could possibly be entertaining about a short preview for a book?

Well, as it turns out, there are a quite a few benefits to promoting books in this way. First, it's a different platform to garner support and exposure for your book. Not everyone in the world wants to sift through Amazon reviews or wade through pages and pages of new releases looking for the hottest picture books. It's far more enjoyable to get a hands on look at some art, some passages, and some reviews all contained within a two minute glance. Second, videos are far more dynamic than an image. You can garner so much more information with interactive text and artwork than with a cover photo. Even with the "look inside the book" feature on popular book vendor websites, there something much more deliberate about the specific art highlighted in book trailers.

The biggest reason to use a book trailer? It's FUN! You get music and movement, excitement and entertainment. The opportunity to captivate a new audience with your product is one any author and publishing press should look forward to. After all, that's sort of the name of the game, isn't it? Getting your book in to more hands?

We'd hardly complain!

So, of course, the point of this small discussion is that we have a new book trailer! Hooray! Take a look below and tell us what you think!

We promise: it's worth staying awake for.

Book Trailers: Take 2

It's no secret that we love book trailers. We put up a list of our favorites in June, and since then we've developed a Pinterest board dedicated to them, and watched countless ones in our daily newsletters from Shelf Awareness. In fact, we've come across so many new trailers that we decided we pretty much had to post a followup list. So what follows are some of our new favorites, but undoubtedly, the list will continue to grow.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green


If you haven't read this book yet, you must go and buy it today. It's great. And the book trailer doesn't disappoint either. The split screen and music made me fall in love with this trailer just as much as the book.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente


The illustrations for both of her books (see next trailer) are beautiful and simply amazing. They are somewhat reminiscent of Brian Selznick, who we featured in our first list of trailers. The song is pretty great too.

Book Trailers

I doubt that book trailers will ever get the same attention that movie or TV trailers do. Just look at The Hunger Games: the movie trailer has gotten over 4.6 million views on YouTube, while its book counterpart has only gotten 1,700. But I'll admit that more than once a book trailer has pushed me to get a book that I was previously on the fence about reading. Yes, some of them are terribly boring or have nothing to do with the book, but there are also some great ones out there that deserve some recognition.
So when I came across Melville House Books' Moby Awards for the best (and worst) book trailers, I was delighted. You can check out some of last year's hits—and MAJOR misses—on their website, but here are some of their picks, as well as some of my own favorites.



It's a Book by Lane Smith


This is such a great book, and I love how the trailer makes the illustrations come alive.

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
 

Wonderstruck's illustrations are beautifully intricate, and this trailer not only shows that, in an interesting 3-dimensional way, but it also allows viewers to hear about the book from Selznick himself as he walks in and out of the sketches.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
 

The typography and silent-film feel of this trailer are what attracted me to it. It's only text, but it still manages to be more appealing than other trailers with hired actors.