See No Books, Read No Books: Advertising with Cinematic Book Trailers
June 12, 2009
by Auburn Rutledge
amateur trailer for THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak
The means of advertising books and movies are many: posters in trendy locales, website ads, reviews in papers or blogs, displays at stores, entertainment segments or interviews on popular news and talk shows, and word-of-mouth that becomes increasingly easy to pass along through digital means. There are avenues, no doubt, and lots of them.
But the most ubiquitous is the movie trailer. It is the a popular and effective method of reaching people because we are an extremely visual culture. We want to see. And trailers indulge us in this craving. We are tantalized by the thirty-second or one- or two-minute glimpse a trailer offers us of the movie to come. They can be clever, dark, funny, mysterious, odd. They plant in our minds an excitement, an anticipation of something that might not be available to watch for over a year. And yet we love the trailers and their shorter brethren, the aptly-named teasers.
In recent years the publishing industry has capitalized on this success by producing their own counterpart: the book trailer. The challenges for the book trailer are unique. Those producing book trailers must start from scratch, gathering relevant words and phrases and key ideas and then translating them into images. The trailers come in multiple forms: still images with words, words by themselves, clever image-collages, flash movies, the rare animation, and on rarer-still occasions, live-action actors on sets.
It is the latter ones that I find the most intriguing.
Because they are the most cinematic, they are the most familiar to the widest audience. They could easily be mixed with their movie counterparts on websites, television commercials, even movie theatres. By pursuing cinematic techniques in book trailers and placing them in new promotional avenues, can we generate more audience interest and thus more book readers?
Cinematic book trailers can be a gamble, to be sure. The more elaborate a trailer, the more resources that have to be purchased. You risk alienating certain members of your audience who might see the shift in advertising to more resemble movies as pandering to a dumbed-down, mass-media culture. Readers and authors alike might be upset that your actors or sets don’t conform to their view of what the characters and the locations “should” look like. Many of these are the same issues encountered in book-to-film adaptations (which I wrote a post about a few weeks ago).
But “cinematic” doesn’t necessarily mean just like a movie trailer. What should be encouraged is taking what audiences know and like and finding unique ways to translate this to a book trailer. If more companies and authors see trailers as being a widespread, viable method of advertising their books, the demand for trailer creation will grow, promoting competition, increasing the quality and quantity of the product. And the more of a quality product, the more the prospective audience will see it, and thus the more people will hopefully pick up the book.
Check out the links below for some examples of book trailers who take their cues from their cinematic counterparts:
- The Indigo King by James A. Owen:
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: http://digitalbooktalk.com/?p=19
- A Great and Terrible Beauty by Gemma Doyle:
What is the current effectiveness of the book trailer and how can we improve it? Let us know your thoughts.
Tags:
Comments
I've actually written an
I've actually written an ebook about the effectiveness of book trailers. Since I have 7 years experience with them I've gathered a lot of data on the subject.
Book trailers have more utility than print ads, banner ads or radio. They reach far, give analytics, can be portable and can remain online forever at no additional cost. So as long as the book is for sale, it is being advertised online with the video.
Having one, even a great one, isn't enough. You need to know what to do with it once you have it. So, distribution is very important. Social media, specialty sites, libraries, booksellers, etc. are important to get your video to.
Digital video can also be used on television, movie theaters, out-of-home advertising and portables such as PSP and iphone.
The cost is far less than a print ad in an major magazine or newspaper. COS Productions, which I own, has videos that start at $300 and come with incredible distribution. The fully produced ones can run anywhere from $2500 to $10,000 or more according to what you want in it.
What is the ROI? Well, that's all according to what your goal was. Sometimes you're investing in branding, promotion or some other goal. So you want to make sure you know what your goal is before you invest.
We have a number of clients who have reported anywhere from 12% to 15% sales increase that they attribute directly to their video. We have clients who experience a surge in traffic to their website, or placement on a bestsellers list they'd never been on before. Those are testimonials you can find on our website, so that's not COS saying that, it comes from the individual.
How many books will sell because of a book trailer? How can you really know? Most campaigns have more than just a video to them so it's hard to say. How many books sell from a USA Today ad? And that's $15,000!
As more and more people get online and use online tools to make purchasing decisions book video will become more effective, have more utility and have a wider appeal to a variety of audiences.
Sheila- thanks for the
Sheila- thanks for the detailed comment on book trailers! You are absolutely right. As with any book and its publicity/advertising efforts, it is the distribution of the final product that determines effectiveness. As digital influence on purchasing and consumer trends continues to grow, we hope to see the effectiveness of the trailer continue to grow with it.
Post new comment