I am planning a book trailer for the new e-book edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff. Evidently you can train for the Olympics in less time than it takes to make a book trailer. And, as with so much that writers do regarding self-promotion, there's not a lot of evidence that you get much return on investment. However, when I originally decided to publish this e-book, back before I realized that my e-book editions are my back list and valuable for that reason, one of my goals was to learn new promotional/marketing...things. And trailers, worthwhile or not, are a new promotional/marketing...thing.
So far, I've looked at book trailers and read The Book Trailer Manual by Darcy Pattinson. I've looked at more book trailers, reread Saving the Planet & Stuff, and created a log of juicy bits and dialogue. I've come up with a few trailer ideas and looked at book trailers. Now I'm working on a storyboard and looking at book trailers.
A family member sent me The Big Tease: Trailers Are a Terrific Way to Hook Kids on Books in School Library Journal, which includes...trailers! I've also stumbled upon 7 Brilliant Book Trailers at Brain Pickings. Most of these were too long for my taste. I am already firmly in the school of "keep 'em under a minute and a half." But I wanted to bring your attention to the first one, for Maurice Gee's Going West. I was drawn to that because I was so taken, years ago, by Gee's book, The Fat Man. The trailer for Going West is visually stunning. I have to say, though, that while I was riveted to the images, I barely noticed the soundtrack. Someone was reading something. That's all I can tell you. Is that good? Is that bad? At any rate, I now know Gee wrote a book called Going West, which I didn't know yesterday.
As happens whenever I am involved in something for work, you can be sure I will keep yammering about it here. In the meantime, if anyone wants to recommend a book trailer, feel free to do so in the comments.
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