I was wondering if you've given any thought to what it is in a book trailer that works for you and what doesn't.
I'm sorry to both prove a disappointing data point while at the same being an early responder to your question, but frankly, there's nothing in book trailers that interests me. I've seen many, but have never bought a book because of one, for the same reason I've never bought anything because I saw it advertised on TV, or heard it advertised on the radio.
Seems I have to go out of my way to look at book trailers, almost all of them existing in an electronic form available for viewing on computer. My initial interest in the new marketing angle is what initially spurred my curious examination of them, and online is where they seem to exist in abundance, but I'm averse to clicking on things that waste my time.
See, I'd rather hold the book, look at the cover, front and back, read the blurb, read the first page, the last page, thumb through what's inside and, most of all, compare that book to the competition sitting on the shelf right next to it. Those things give me a feel for the character of the story and how it's told and how it stacks up to similar ones competing for my interest. A book trailer, using different media altogether to sell, creates someone else's impression a book rather than my own. I'm happier sticking to my own. So I'll happily waste my time in a manner with which I'm more familiar – browsing in a bookstore – than I will by browsing online via book trailers.
I suppose if a book trailer existed for a new book by an author whose work I admire, I might be inclined to seek out and watch the trailer, but it's not the trailer that would motivate me to buy the book.
Granted, I'm not the intended audience for such ads, nor do I exist among your blog article's target demographic (either as studious reader or subject of marketing concern), but I do believe that cross-media tie-ins are exactly the way to go for your target audience. My teenage nephews, for instance, play loads of video games, and it's such play that seems to have motivated one of them to become a reader: he enjoyed the universe of one the games enough that he started buying novels set in the same universe. Methinks that was Halo. Could be wrong.
The advent of the e-book might very well bring back the serial novel and increase the popularity of the short story.
Maybe. General comment: I'll believe that when I see it. Particular comment: One hurdle for your audience may be to overcome audience expectation. That is, if you read a story on the same electronic device upon which you play a noisy, kinetic game, shouldn't the story do more than just silently sit there?
I see nine book trailers on your blog page. I didn't look at any of them, probably because I'm not a curious kid already familiar with the authors or characters, but even if the page had offered trailers for Neil Gaiman books, ones by Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson, or other authors whose work I usually find interesting, I likely still wouldn't have clicked on them. But if the trailers were for new books by them, I'd be inclined to visit my local bookstore to look them over.
But get this: suppose you'd had a trailer on there for a new Alan Moore work? Or Frank Miller? I would have looked at those. Why is that? Theirs are visual works. Therefore, I'm interested in what they look like. Conversely, I'm not interested in what a trailer puttter-togetherer thinks a prose story looks like. I'm interested in what I think it should like.
Apparently I had some free time this morning. Man, I'm long winded. Paragraph five is probably the only one you really want to read, in here.
