Comments on: Book Marketing & New Media: Book Trailers

By: Useful Sites (weekly) « Rhondda’s Reflections - wandering around the Web

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:45:54 +0000

[...] Book Marketing & New Media: Book Trailers « TSTC Publishing’s Book Business Blog [...]

By: Book Trailers, A Little Bit of Music, and Video Saving « Wister Teens

Book Trailers, A Little Bit of Music, and Video Saving « Wister Teens — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:25:05 +0000

[...] Book Trailers – http://tstcpublishing.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/book-marketing-new-media-book–trailers/ [...]

By: Sheila

Sheila — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 00:41:35 +0000

VidLit, which I love, actually does music videos as well.
Circle of Seven Productions started the book trailer market in 2002. At that time if you Googled the term “book trailer” you got zero results back. So, COS trademarked the term, under a very specific definition. And in 2002 we created Dark Symphony, a book by best selling author Christine Feehan.
In 2003 Borders Group began using COS book video, and now BNN, Powells and other booksellers use them. As content. No co-op.
You can check out the COS YouTube site at http://www.youtube.com/booktrailers, or check out our newest endeavor http://www.readersentertainment.tv which is about to have a major overhaul to the site, but it’s still fun.
Just having the book video is not enough. Distribution, utilization and effectiveness are what’s important in 2008.
I’m about to release an eBook that specifically discusses the performance, distribution, utilization and effectiveness of book trailers. It’s free. You can go to http://www.cosproductions.com and sign up for the newsletter if you’d like a copy.
We have made nearly 300 video since 2002. All of them for books, booksellers or that are book related. Our trailers play on television and in movie theaters. Our next venue is out-of-home advertising (mobile phones, digital billboards, mall smart screens, etc.)
We do have video analytics that can track the success of our videos. We also have a team of readers and book reviews who beta test our videos as a part of our quality improvement commitment.
This is a great blog! So happy I stumbled across it!

By: Madam Mayo

Madam Mayo — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:05:02 +0000

Glad to have found your blog— very interesting post, thanks. My own sense is that movie-style “trailers” for books — I mean, just ads without much meat to them— are going to be way passe, asap. With literary video, vid-lit, whatever you want to call it, I think we’re going to be seeing something much more of an art-form, much more interesting than that. The competition for surfers’s attention will demand it.

By: Ron Sanders

Ron Sanders — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:16:06 +0000

Great post and great comments. I had never heard of book trailers either and your picture had me worried. One aspect of the trailers above that I found interesting was the importance of music in all of them. It would help to have either a library of royalty-free music or a friend with MIDI expertise to make a good one (or a lot of money and a publisher with deep pockets like Mr. King).

By: Nichola D.

Nichola D. — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:33:15 +0000

I’d never heard of book trailers before but I like them. Although not a fan of Stephen King I liked that one and do like the Rachel Weingarten one. Thanks. Nichola

By: Rachel Weingarten

Rachel Weingarten — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:08:29 +0000

and of course I forgot to include the other link – here you go

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rachel+weingarten&search=Search

By: Rachel Weingarten

Rachel Weingarten — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:07:11 +0000

Hey Mark,

Thanks for linking to my trailer as well- much appreciated. As mentioned the book trailer is for my book Career and Corporate Cool(TM) and the idea was to translate the fun stylish aspects of the book to the web and trailer form- and I think we were successful on both counts. The book is about business and style which are rarely combined and can come across as stilted or stuffy or trying too hard, so the trailer had to be fun while making one main point- stand out from the crowd.

For the record, there were three trailers taking different approaches, one tracked women in business throughout history and the other focused on one chapter in particular Chapter 10/beauty – you can watch all three here

I think book trailers like much that has been developed in promotional tools and web 2.0 can be another fun way to engage and interact with your audience, that said- they can also be a way to turn off potential readers if your trailer is over-long, over-preachy or just plain boring. Most of all they can increase your visibility even with non-readers, so it’s usually a win/win thing.

Have I answered any of your questions?
Thanks again,
Rachel

By: Stacey Cochran

Stacey Cochran — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:34:03 +0000

Thanks, Mark, for linking to my DVD trailer, and thanks for contacting me regarding my thoughts on book trailers in general. I think trailers are very effective in giving a potential audience a better idea of what the book or product is about.

In my case, I have a DVD titled “How to Publish a Book, How to Get a Literary Agent” and the DVD is comprised of a popular seminar I did last year at Borders Bookstores. The trailer includes about 3 choices pieces from the 60-minute presentation, combined with text and music to create a tone appropriate for the content.

Like you said, it’s a very “nuts and bolts” product, and the trailer reflects that.

I used iMovie on an Apple Powerbook to create the trailer, and the presentation was recorded with a Samson Studio Condenser Mic recording with Audacity on a laptop. The video was captured on a Sony mini-DV camcorder.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

You might check out my trailer for my novel THE COLORADO SEQUENCE for comparison: