Homemade trailers for promoting your book

I seem to have some distant and perhaps false memory of finding a topic like this somewhere else, but Search failed to turn up anything.

One of my close friends who is a writer has made a sort of "theatrrical trailer" if you will promoting her novel (she's not published, nor does she plan to be)... and I'm starting to see it's not that uncommon.

What are your two cents on something like this, both for someone who is looking to publish that particular story and for someone who does it just general "non-serious" promotion?

Personally, like any good marketing tool, they can be good -- if used effectively; the chances of me finding relevant media to include (anything besides my own drawings and/or music which are of "lesser" quality) and to seamlessly integrate that into a well-formed video are quite slim, though not impossible; unless I was very experienced (more than I am now) in the "theory" of good video editing and production, and if I had material such as images, animation sequences, etc. that flowed well, it would probably at the most take away from the actual desired effect.

On the other hand, if you're just looking to deliver a short and quick message that does have fairly decent stuff, it can actually be better. It all depends on what you're trying to get across, and the way you do so.

Book trailers and theatrical film trailers are exactly alike in concept -- they give you a taste of what's to come using a major hook -- except unlike in a written query letter, the hook is aided by visuals as well as the main text. The way I view them is kind of as a very very rough "concept" of what the book would be like in a film (images suggesting general themes and maybe character sketches/drawings), or trying to capture the feeling of the book as film. In terms of its potential, it is EXTREMELY rare for this kind of thing to do a good job.

I realize now I've neglected to mention the side of those who are not pursuing publishing and creating such videos. Yes, the logic seems backwards... why don't they just publish it and have a publisher promote it for them? If I had to think of a reason, it'd be the mindset of a contract commitment being involved, and the idea that your writing is now a profession and not necessarily a hobby. Well, they don't want the commitment of a contract, they want to write just for pleasure -- they do it as a pastime -- to take it easy for only a part of the day or week -- as a leisurely and unstructured thing, and in terms of promotion, self-publishing just costs them money. So what to do? Use free alternative methods of promotion... and in this case, one of them being video.

The word "promote" in the previous context is indeed somewhat inaccurate. "Notify" or something similar would be more applicable. In a way, they're "broadcasting" their literary work to the world using video as a medium, which is kind of like promotion.

In short: They don't want the worries -- the time crunches and "professionalism" of pursuing publishing... just to write at your own pace, your own style, just as a thing to do in your spare time. As for the book trailers themselves: It's just another medium of getting your work out there. Whether it's a good medium is up to people's own personal opinion. That's how I see it.

My friend made the video mostly for friends to answer your question; it was just a for-fun thing to do.