after watching the book trailer for “forest of hands and teeth” on erin’s recent post, i started to wonder: what is the DEAL with book trailers? and, more importantly, why are they so BAD?
i don’t know when this phenomenon began, and i’m too lazy to even look it up on wikipedia… ok, wait, wait, i’m not THAT lazy. here, erin, you can add this to yr trivia library:
“The first book trailer to be played publicly was at a book convention in Shreveport, LA. in 2003. The trailer was for a book entitled Dark Symphony by author Christine Feehan.”
SHREVEPORT REPRESENT!!!! (i’m from louisiana, y’all, and to be honest, we don’t have a lot of prestige for things like books, so we gotta take it where we can get it).
ok, so obvs they’re a recent phenomenon, because now we have the internet and publishers are worried that people won’t read actual books anymore and they’re willing to do Whatever It Takes to sell books, even if it means stooping to the teen youtube crowd and making monstrosities like this:
why do i get the feeling that someone just did a google image search for “emo” and “vampire”? also, i love how the text dramatically shakes, esp. on the phrase, “WITH HER FATHER.” OMG NO NOT WITH HER FATHER!!!!! this book is so hardcore, it requires guyliner. wow.
now while i wait for my eyes to stop bleeding, let’s go over a few common book trailer issues:
pros:
since book trailers are videos, they expose reluctant readers to amazing books like “the hunger games.”
the existence of book trailers inspires readers to make their own, just like montages of bella and edward or whatever, which further promotes the book.
cons:
book trailers usually include a lot of text, which is unfortunate if the publisher is trying to lure in people who don’t like reading.
it’s not like publishers have the same budget as, say, roland emmerich, so the quality of the videos tends to be weak. like, really weak.
seriously, it’s a book. the main way people get excited about books is *reading* about them. am i wrong?!
and i know i already mentioned the poor quality but you guys, if publishers want to get serious, they need to hire someone with basic editing skills. i swear, sometimes it’s impossible to tell if a book trailer was made by a super fan or the publisher. case in point:
this is the OFFICIAL TRAILER for this book. i mean, the star fade?!! really?!!! i could make a better video using microsoft paint, and yes, i realize there is no video function in that program.
obvs that’s an extreme example, but seriously, given the format of book trailers, is it possible to make one that’s not cheesy? even bestsellers like the immortals series get stuck with the same stock photos used by textbook companies and travel agencies:
i swear i’ve seen that girl with the knit cap on a brochure for campus life or female health or something.
even books that i WANT to read don’t seem to translate well into trailer format. like, this one for kristen cashore’s “fire” reminds me of the educational videos we had to watch in world history when i was in high school. and that’s not a good thing, y’all.
another piece of advice i have for publishers (besides getting a bigger budget) is DON’T LET THE AUTHOR DO THE VIDEO. these people are WRITERS, not actors. and not to stereotype BUT writers aren’t really known for their glowing social skills or their on-camera charisma.
case in point: the book trailer for “blood promise” with richelle mead. how can i learn about the book when i’m too busy watching richelle uncomfortably lean against a bridge or talk to the camera as she strolls (read: tries not to trip) through a forest? and WHY IS SHE THROWING STONES INTO THE STREAM? this book is about VAMPIRES, not nature walks! at least her hair’s not in her face. ahem.
granted, there are a few exceptions. who doesn’t love to watch jk rowling talk about harry potter in her classy british voice? and then there’s this video, which is promoted as a book trailer but pretty much defies all of the typical format rules and HEY maybe THAT’s why it’s good! or it could be that i really just love sarah dessen and totally freak out like a swimfan when i see the REAL LIFE QUIK ZIP OMGGGG!!!
SARAH LET’S HANG OUT! i’ll buy you an extra large zip cola!
ok, so, that’s ONE book trailer i like, although i realize that if people have never heard of sarah dessen, that video probably won’t get them to read any of her books.
i guess that leads me back to my original opinion: book trailers are totally frenemies of books. they act like they want to help books out, but then they make them look bad BEHIND THEIR BACK. and that kind of behavior makes me feel v. v. stabby.
i’ll leave you with the one trailer that i think is actually *trying* to help out the book. and that trailer is, of course, for “catching fire.” it’s not perfect, and it still follows the stale format of a typical trailer, but the editing isn’t half bad, and it does build up a decent amount of tension.
so, what do you guys think? are there awesome promos that i’ve missed? are book trailers really the wave of the future and i’m just a cranky old lady who will never buy a kindle? hmm. probably.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I will never, ever, ever buy a Kindle. I don’t care how cool they are. I don’t care how many trees I’m killing. You will pry the feel and smell of a much-loved book out of my COLD, DEAD HANDS, technology.
I just don’t understand the point of book trailers. Not only are they usually bad, but they put pre-existing voices and images in my head. Let me use my imagination, book trailers!!
HA. I love in the Blood Promise trailer when Richelle gently and delicately touches the tree and they zoom in on her hand and the tree. And the background music. It sounds kind of like the background music in some of my yoga DVDs. Are we supposed to be calm and meditative when discussing vampires? Hmmm.
I’ve actually been mad about the Fire one for a while. Fire is one of my favorite books of this year, and they ruined it! Fire is a person you cannot create on zero budget! (It’s like the Twilight movie. You can’t throw hollloween face paint on an actor and call them the Cullens.) Fire is more beautiful than humanly possible! you cannot throw an average looking lady on a fuzzy picture of a horse and call her Fire!! Sorry. I’ve abused the exclamation marks.
Good post. I throughly enjoyed it, and have kicked peole out of my office so that I could watch the bad trailers in peace.
thanks, teresa! and yeah, i haven’t read “fire” yet (i’m on the library wait list, which for this book is like the equivalent of the dmv line) but this trailer definitely does it no favors. like, they would’ve been better off splicing scenes from “excaliber” (which we ALSO watched in HS, including the sex scene, cos my teacher didn’t know about it. SNAP).
and MSWR, double true on the yoga music. although if dimitri was involved, i would be willing to do all kinds of poses (WHAT WHAT).
Oh boy, I couldn’t even get through half of that first trailer. Or the second.
There have been two book trailers I’ve come across in the past couple months that I’ve really liked.
The first: Hold Still by Nina LaCour, which was actually made by the author. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYJQa4u2jQ
The second: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. It’s the cheesiness that makes it so great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jZVE5uF24Q
A post has never been more true, Sarah! I hate book trailers with a passion. For me, the number one reason why: when the story is told in the first person, the teenage girl they hire to narrate talks like, well, a modern teenage girl. And although I remember how it felt, and love reading about them, I don’t actually like them, or at least the way they talk. Maybe we all had a specific speech pattern when we were teenagers, too, (Bill & Ted’s comes to mind) but I’m old now, and I like to pretend that my YA heroines talk just like me!
I’m also with you on the anti- Kindle thing. I see its usefulness in certain situations, but much like Mr. Giles, it’s the smell of a book that inspires memory for me.
alita, you’re right, that “hold still” trailer is lovely and earnest and sad without being super cheesy or lame. it’s probably the best one i’ve seen, like, EVER (admittedly, the bar is not v. high). of COURSE they shot it with a super 8, which makes everything, even the happiest, silliest moments, seem bittersweet.
and that S&S&SM trailer is hilarious, although a little too long. i was like, get to the sea monster already!
I love the Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters one. Partly because it’s well-shot, and partly because I wish Marriane had been more like that in the book, instead of whinging all the damn time, and taking long walks in the rain. YOU DO NOT DESERVE COL. BRANDON, MARIANNE!
To be fair, no one deserves Col. Brandon. He is too good! Especially when he’s Alan Rickman!
I liked the Under the Dome trailer, but I was already super-pumped about the book, so it may have colored my enthusiasm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQJmy6k8NNY
ooh, yeah, meredith, that dome trailer is pretty intense. now i want to borrow it from you even more!! hurry up already!!!
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that book trailers *can* be good. That particular format or media in and of itself isn’t a bad way to market a book, and there was one that made its way onto Vulture a few months ago that had me actually considering the book (but then I waited for reviews to come in and they were all pretty bad). Getting that kind of viral attention just ain’t gonna happen without a multimedia kind of thing.
So the medium itself isn’t the problem, but I agree that the content of all of those (or what little content I could get through) was all pretty bad. But that’s where I think the larger problem comes into play: FYA readers aren’t the publishers’ main demographic, and they’re not making videos that they anticipate any of us enjoying. They’re making videos for thirteen year old girls, and they’re putting the least amount of effort into it as they can. Clearly their hope is that a girl who read Hunger Games will put the trailer for Catching Fire on her MySpace page and things will spread by word of mouth that way.
But of course not understanding the size of their adult audience for these stories is a huge mistake they make all of over the place, and it’s the same thing that makes them create such horrible book covers. YA needs to have, and probably will have soon, the same kind of renaissance that harlequin gave the romance novel a couple of years ago, when they finally realized that housewives in the 1950s were no longer their number one demographic.
That’s gonna happen, and when it does, there’ll be video trailers for books that you absolutely LOVE, because they’ll be tailor made to see to it that you will. And that point might be even creepier than the footage of Richelle.
OMG that second one was so horrible i almost cried. the only thing that could’ve made it worse would be if they used comic sans for the font. the music! the lame faux-texas references!
also, richelle mead actually made me think vampire academy is the lamest, most boring series EVER. i’ll have to go reread poshdeluxe’s review to get the courage to pick it up.
and y’all, i have a kindle. BUT it’s not the only way i read books — i love love real books, and i also listen to audiobooks all the time (what better way to make laundry more enjoyable than to get in some reading time?). mainly i use the kindle for travelling because it sux to pack 8 books in my carryon luggage for an international flight — i mean, who KNOWS what i’ll be in the mood to read? but i can totally see not getting one (the plus? never being embarrassed about craptastic book covers).
henri, you are a smartie pants, cos that’s an excellent point. i think the whole twlight thing is obvs influencing the types of book trailers that are getting made right now, but hopefully as the industry continues to grow, we can see more like “hold still” and less like “strange angels.” yipes.
and meghan, don’t feel bad for owning a kindle! like you said, it makes way more sense than lugging around ten YA books on a plane, PLUS yeah, no one can judge you for that vampire academy cover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgG2Kt5JM8w
I’m behind on my blog reading but so glad I checked in and saw this post! I’m also really curious about book trailers, the majority of which, even nearly 8 years after they first appeared, are very poorly done. I’m actually writing a paper on book trailers for grad school right now. One trailer I do really like is the one for Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book,” which features voiceover from Neil and illustration from the book – look for it on YouTube (or on my site). As you pointed out, many of the book trailers out there (like the one for Fire) can actually turn readers off from the books – really unfortunate. I’m curious to see if this new marketing strategy turns into something great as more and more people watch video online… or crashes and burns.