Book trailers? Dunno. Haven’t thought too much about them
before and certainly hadn’t watched too many. One of the sites I looked at for
Week 7, Random House for Teens, had what I and the one article would classify
as the “low-budget” version – some ominous music, smoke, attempt to create
mystery – but really it just left me thinking “huh?” I did have fun watching
the ones embedded in the Times’ article
– especially Mary Karr’s and Jeannette Walls’. I think those were most
interesting to me as far as meeting the people and “characters” behind the
books – seeing pictures of the authors and their families, hearing their
voices. I’m not sure they succeed in marketing the books – if anything, I was
drawn to them because I had already read the books and wanted to see more
behind-the-scenes dialogue and explanation. In fact, when I was watching book
trailers on You Tube, I found myself searching for titles I had read, to see
how others had interpreted the story. Book Launch 2.0 and Lowboy were just
plain funny – could see them grabbing a certain audience, too, but again, I was
drawn to the humor, not necessarily to the books’ content.
For me, I don’t think I’ll be looking to book trailers to
pick future reads, although it was interesting that the Times’ article noted this was becoming more popular amongst teens. Personally,
I get more from written reviews, but could see how a well-made trailer could
create hype for a title. And – if we have both written reviews/summaries and
trailers for movies, it only makes sense to have the same for books – although I’m
guessing a movie’s marketing budget is a little larger ($10,000 for just a
basic book trailer seems like beaucoup bucks).
If I did have a customer who seemed more visual, I might
direct them to trailers, but otherwise, straight book talks still seem
quickest. I will continue to use other RA sites and tools, not book trailers,
to find titles – but like with everything, it’s good to have another tool in
our “RA tool kit” at our disposal.
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