A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my enthusiasm for a couple of book trailers I had seen at the recent Indie Book Buzz librarian event in NYC. On the bus ride home, I pondered the possibility of running a weekly brown bag lunch program during which I could show my library patrons trailers for upcoming titles. This would be library programming at its best - not only would my patrons be entertained by the book trailers, but it would also generate more interest in reading and more library books being checked out. I even started thinking about the possibility of somehow turning all of this into a small business opportunity for myself, creating a weekly collection of intriguing book trailers that could be sold on a subscription basis to both libraries and individual readers.
When I got home that night, I started my research by going to Wikipedia for an overview and learned the following:
1. The term "book trailer" is a trademarked term owned by Sheila Clover of Circle of Seven Productions.
2. The first book trailer to be shown at a public venue was for Dark Symphony, by Christine Feehan, shown at a book convention held in Shreveport Louisiana in 2003 although Circle of Seven had begun producing book trailers the year before.
3. The concept of the book trailer caught on more widely in 2005 with the advent of websites like Youtube which facilitated the sharing of user generated video.
4. The University of Central Florida developed the Digital Booktalk Project which includes a curriculum model teachers can use to show students how to make their own book trailers as a way to encourage kids to read.
5. In 2007, School Library Journal established the "Trailie Awards" in three categories: author/publisher created, student created, adult/librarian created.
I also realized that my idea of starting a business revolving around the dissemination of book trailers was a little bit late out of the gate since the Wikipedia article referred me to three already existing websites that were bringing book trailers to the general public. The first was vabbler.com, a website that offered links to only seven book trailers, all of which were intended for a juvenile or young adult readers, in spite of the fact that the website's author list actually consisted of twenty names, including crossover writers like Danielle Steel and James Patterson. The trailers I watched were short, generally running no more than a couple of minutes, and varied in the complexity of their production values. The majority of the books being featured were on the dark side, either crime fiction, horror or sci-fi dystopia. Interestingly, the quality of the trailer did not depend on whether or not it featured live action, since animation or still photo montages proved to be equally effective in grabbing my attention as long the background music was sufficiently evocative and the narrative compelling. It also didn't make a difference to me if the narrative was provided by a voiceover or by changing text superimposed over the graphics.
My next visit was to Book Trailer Central, a place for people to "share, view or rate book trailers from established and up and coming authors." The vast majority of the 177 trailers posted to the site were for works published by small presses (and including ebooks) from authors I had never heard of. The few trailers that I sampled came across as amateurish, with a couple that were downright cheesy. That I did not enjoy the trailers made me feel fairly certain that I would not enjoy the books they were promoting either. It was also kind of depressing to see that the majority of trailers, some of which had been posted as far back as 2009, had been viewed fewer than 20 times.
So then it was on to Book Screening, the most professional in appearance by far of the three websites I was checking out. Trailers were grouped together by category, with nonfiction (251), mystery/thriller (184), youth (137), literary (112), children (90) and romance (80), having the largest numbers of trailers. Trailers were also archived by date, starting with July 2008 but stopping after January 2010. When I clicked on the link for FAQ, the only information given was that the website was not currently accepting new trailers. In the category of mystery/thriller, I found trailers for a number of heavy hitters, including the likes of John Grisham, Joseph Finder, Lisa Jackson, Christine Feehan, Lisa Gardiner, James Patterson, Brad Thor, and Stephen King. However, with so many trailers to look at, I quickly became overwhelmed and found myself losing interest in anything that ran for more than a minute. The effect of having access to so many trailers in one place caused me to behave in a manner that could only be described as adult onset ADD.
So where does all of this lead?
Again, to be continued.
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