Book Trailers: Authors' Views

In my previous post, Book Trailers, I wrote, "What I wonder most about book videos is whether they have a positive impact on book sales. I would love to see hard data, if there is any."

Though I have yet to see any sales figures, I did hear back from some of the authors whose trailers I cited. On Bastille Day, I had lunch at a French (mais bien sûr!) restaurant with client Doreen Orion. In a comment to the above post, after praising my French accent (for which she gets my undying gratitude), Doreen wrote:

I wish I could tell you if my videos have helped QUEEN OF THE ROAD, but they've been released at the same time as my fabulo website (which you've commented on quite a bit, Merci), as well as some of the wonderful reviews the book has gotten. I can tell you that as I'm doing my radio tour this summer, I always mention my website, saying, "it has wonderful pictures of our trip, reviews, an excerpt as well as videos, including of the nudist RV park. Now, don't crash my site, people." And, I have noticed Amazon sales as well as webstats going up after each interview. How much is specifically due to the video, I have no idea, but even if it's only indirectly, i.e., it drives people to my website who then like what they see (PULEASE! I DON'T mean naked, middle-aged me) and then buy the book, I'm not complainin'.

Sherry Thomas, another client, emailed me that coincidentally today she downloaded a trailer for her second novel, DELICIOUS. A techno-head, Sherry makes the trailers herself, though "frankly I can't tell you what a book trailer does. I think I just like to make them--once I figured out how to use Windows Movie Maker. It's a lot of fun."

On the down side, Sherry notes that when her agent, Kristin Nelson, posted the trailer for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS on her blog, PubRants, one commenter wrote that "the trailer made her definitely not want to read the book." In which case it probably wasn't her kind of book anyway, says I.

On the up side, a Dear Author post in March, My First Sale by Sherry Thomas: Love in the Ruins of Home Improvement, received a slew of positive comments. Julie Leto of Plot Monkeys wrote:

Please consider this an example of a book trailer selling a book. I’m going out today. I cannot resist a book if the author has this kind of sense of humor! Besides, I love Victorian books.

Sherry wrote that Leto " also later contacted me and told me she enjoyed the book very much, and if I would like to guest blog at her place when it's time for my upcoming release."

In my previous post I wrote about the viral hit Book Launch 2.0 by Dennis Cass (HEAD CASE: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain). Doreen Orion echoed my observations:

I had the same thought about Cass' video: It was hysterical, but didn't give any info about the book. I also wonder if people outside the industry "got" it. I sent it to a few civilian friends and they didn't see what was so funny, until I explained the joke. So, I wonder, too, if it really helped sales.

In my post I'd added parenthetically, "One of these days, I'll contact Cass & ask what effect the video had." Well, yesterday was one of those days, and this morning I received the below message from him:

Great post and thanks for the mention. My vid definitely increased sales and was very beneficial in other ways. If you'd like for me to elaborate (for your blog or just for your own curiosity) I'd be happy to, but there's a lot to say and saying it would require writing it, which would require work.

Far be it from me to make anyone do extra work, especially if it involves writing. So per his invitation, I phoned Cass to follow up. I'll post our interview tomorrow.

Book Trailers

Lately I've been thinking a lot about book trailers, as they're the Newest Thing in book promotion. Was mulling over doing a post about them, and then the other day someone asked me my opinion during my monthly "guest expert" stint on the Backspace Writers Forums. Below is a revised version of my response.

A good trailer will garner attention for a book and author. And as debut author Julie Kramer pointed out, having a video is great if you're going to be interviewed on TV. It's a helluva lot more interesting--and memorable--than a static shot of a book jacket. Videos can be particularly useful for "genre" fiction such as mysteries, thrillers and romance because they can create a mood that lures in readers, as the last four do in the list below.

I've seen book trailers that are really good, some that are so-so and some that are total yawns. HarperCollins believes in trailers so much that they're producing them inhouse. GalleyCat has been posting several each week; see Web & Tech.

A book video, just like a TV ad, has to TELL & SELL: Tell what the book is about and sell it to the target audience. It has to answer the Three Big Questions:

1. So what?
2. Who cares?
3. What's in it for me?

After watching a book trailer, the viewer should think, "Wow, I gotta buy this book!" Not just, "Wow, I gotta forward this video!"

Here are some trailers that tell & sell in an enticing way:

• FORESKIN'S LAMENT by Shalom Auslander
• SCHLEPPING THROUGH THE ALPS by Sam Apple
• QUEEN OF THE ROAD by my client Doreen Orion
• YES, YOU'RE PREGNANT, BUT WHAT ABOUT ME? by Kevin Nealon
• PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by my client Sherry Thomas
  
• THE REINCARNATIONIST by M.J. Rose
• STALKING SUSAN by Julie Kramer (published yesterday!)
• WAKE by Lisa McMann

TROPHIES by Heather Thomas has a lavishly produced video that doesn't quite do it for me because the narration (by Gore Vidal!) is ponderous, the dialogue murky, and after nearly 5-1/2 minutes (yawn...) I still didn't know what the book was about nor why I should care about its main characters. Also the bit about dissing the waiter is a little too reminiscent of one in the late, lamented (by me, anyway) TV series "Action" (available on DVD; see it now!). But the acting, whether by dolls or real people, is terrific.

After I forwarded it to GalleyCat two months ago, Book Launch 2.0 went viral. I think everyone in publishing saw it and sent it to everyone they know; I got it at least 3 times. But though achingly funny, the video had nothing to do with the book it was ostensibly promoting. In fact, I couldn't remember the author or book title--or even whether the book was a novel or nonfiction--to save my life. I had to search my blog archives: Dennis Cass, HEAD CASE: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain. (One of these days, I'll contact Cass & ask what effect the video had.)

Last year, there was a big hoopla at BookExpo about the big-bucks "mini-feature" for Ian McEwan's ON CHESIL BEACH. I watched the trailer online. OY. Read my assessment in What's Not to Like? Let Me Count the Ways...

What I wonder most about book videos is whether they have a positive impact on book sales. I would love to see hard data, if there is any.

One concern I have is that book trailers will be added to the ever-expanding list of things that authors "must" have to stay competitive. Which means that they'll be spending time, and especially money, on what are basically commercials for their books instead of writing their books. My position is that every author doesn't have to have a blog, a social networking page or book trailers. (Every author absolutely should have a website, though.)

My second concern is, where are all these book trailers going to be shown besides online? There's been talk of having TVs in bookstores constantly running videos. Everywhere one goes nowadays, whether the supermarket, the mall or the swimming pool, there's music blasting over loudspeakers. There are TVs blaring at the dentist, the auto repair waiting room and the airport. To me, bookstores and libraries are the last secular havens of quiet enjoyment. I don't want that peace shattered by endless loops of book trailers.

Happy Bastille Day!

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix

All together now:
"Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé!"
(Read all about "La Marseillaise" here.)

July 14 will always be a jour de gloire for me. Twelve years ago today, Darling Husband and I were married in Portland, Maine. Our wedding cake was inscribed Liberté, Fraternité, Félicité. (I didn't think Fraternité was quite the thing.)

Too bad THE BLACK TOWER by Louis Bayard won't be out till August 26, because it would be the perfect book to read today. Set in 1818 Paris, it's a mystery about the not-so-pretty aftermath of the French Revolution. Bayard has a marvelous gift for bringing other times and places to pulsing life. You'd swear he'd lived in Dickens's London (Mr. Timothy, which I reviewed for People), trained at West Point in 1830 (The Pale Blue Eye) and consorted with legendary French detective Vidocq. As in The Pale Blue Eye (featuring a young Edgar Allen Poe), THE BLACK TOWER has a terrific triple-whammy at the end. No way you'll see it coming.

French movies to watch tonight (or anytime):

• Paris Je t'Aime -- made me laugh, made me cry; with Gérard Depardieu
• La Vie en Rose (La Môme) -- with Academy Award-winnier Marion Clotillard and Gérard Depardieu
• Cyrano de Bergerac -- with Gérard Depardieu; rhyming subtitles by Anthony Burgess (!)
• Jean de Florette -- with (quelle surprise!) Gérard Depardieu*
• Manon of the Spring (Manon des Sources) -- sequel to "Jean de Florette" (Depardieu isn't in it, but it's a spoiler to explain why)
• Les Enfants du Paradis -- still heartbreaking after 63 years

*Darling Husband: "Is there any recent French movie without Gérard Depardieu?"
Moi: "I like Gérard Depardieu!"

I've Got 99 Problems and the Thermometer Is One

It's 99°F outside right now. That's what it says on my Yahoo home page, anyway. When I clicked for the detailed forecast, it said 95°. Whatever, it's too @#$%! hot.

The only consolation--for sweaty people, not gasping plants--is that the humidity is all of 7%. (News flash: Denver is officially a desert, drier than Los Angeles. And it's on the edge of the Great Plains, not in the Rocky Mountains.) In Virginia when it's this hot, the humidity is often as high as the temperature. There were times in Charlottesville when I'd step outside our air-conditioned house and my glasses would fog up. Feh.

Time for more iced tea...

Quote of the Day

That’s the problem with the truth, isn’t it? People don’t always want to hear it.

--from Recalling a Cheerful Man Made Angry by Hypocrisy by Clyde Haberman in today's NY Times. Writer Eliot Asinof, who died last month at age 88, had been a front in the 1950s for screenwriter Walter Bernstein ("The Front"), who called him "God’s angry man."

At a recent memorial at New York's Harvard Club,

Julian Koenig, who knew Mr. Asinof going back 80 years, told the assembled group that his friend “didn’t like agents, and he didn’t like publishers.”

“And lawyers,” a woman cried out.

It's Hard Out There for a Cat

Above and bottom, Max reacts to the news that he received only 1% of the vote in the Summer Cats popularity contest.

"You're going to be a star tomorrow," I whispered to Max last night. I'd sent a photo of him sacked out on the edge of a bed to GalleyCat, which is having its annual Summer Cats contest. (See Thursday entries and vote here.)

Filled with excitement, first thing this morning I clicked on GalleyCat, only to discover that Max had received zero votes. I was crushed. Now I know how the mother of a beauty pageant loser feels. It was small consolation that when I checked a few minutes ago, Max had received 1% of the vote.

I have to admit that Katinka (the companion of one of my favorite novelists, Katharine Weber), Sebastian and Petunia are pretty damn cute. (I said "Awwww!" at the pic of Petunia sleeping in a manuscript box.) But out of loyalty I cast my vote for Max.

As you can see, all this has deeply affected him.



Update July 11, 11am:
Max has now garnered 3%. I think some people have been playing Mama Rose and haranguing their friends to vote, as one cat (not mentioning any names) who I don't think is terrifically cute is now in the lead with 23% of the vote. Hmpf!

Voyage of Discovery Leads to a Prize

Yesterday's Shelf Awareness had an item telling about the reaction of UK Guardian blogger Nicholas Lezard to

the announcement that Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth had won the Frank O'Connor award outright when the judges chose to dispense with a shortlist (Shelf Awareness, July 7, 2008).

To learn more, I clicked on the link to Lezard's July 7 post:

Give Us Back Our Shortlists
The judges should have given a handful of writers the chance to put 'shortlisted for a Frank O'Connor award' on their next book

Call me provincial, but I'd never heard of the Frank O'Connor award, so I Googled it and was led to the home page of The Munster Literature Centre. (Its title bar just reads "Home Page." How dumb is that?) At the top it congratulates "new O'Connor laureate" Lahiri.

Below the little book jacket image and to the right of Lahiri's enormous headshot (oh, by the way, she's gorgeous; hmm...) is an announcement for The Sean O'Faolain Short Story Prize, which I'd also never heard of. But here's where it gets good:

• The competition is open to original unpublished short stories in the English language of 3,000 words or less. The story can be on any subject, in any style by a writer of any nationality, living anywhere in the world.
  

• Entry deadline is July 31st 2008.
  

• The winners will be announced at the International Frank O’Connor Festival of the Short Story in Cork in September. The winners will be invited to read their prize winning stories at the festival.
  

• First Prize: €1,500 (approx US$2300) and publication in the literary biannual Southword.
  

• Second Prize: €500 (approx US$790) and publication in Southword.
  

• Four other shortlisted entries will be selected for publication in Southword and receive a fee of €100 euros (approx US$158).

See full competition rules here.