Do book trailers make you buy books?
I have recently been seeing a trend of more elaborate and longer book trailers, and this made me think on whether or not these video trailers influence you on whether you buy a book.
For me, I think some of them are super cool, but they were definitely not a factor at all for me buying the book. Publishers, authors, and others in the marketing of the books industry are spending money to video artists to make these short and usually not very visually stimulating videos for these books. Is it really worth it?
My main problem with this is, books are printed media, in a world where computers and internet and television, rule our every day lives do we really need video media to tell me everything about this book and why I should buy it?
Maybe I am just old school, I don’t like when there are people on the front of the book cover also. I like my imagination to run where it goes and I don’t want a predisposed image to tell me what I should be thinking.
I am going to post some of the better book trailers I have seen here and let you decide, does this make you want to read the book mentioned?
By: trish
Book trailers certainly don’t make me buy books. In fact, some I’ve seen would turn me off had I not already read the book. However, I think book trailers are well suited for teens, since they’re scouring the web anyway. :-)
By: Catherine
Personally, I am not a fan of book trailers. I’ll watch them for ones I already want (like, I have seen the one for Silver Phoenix and adored it, but it was already on my WANT! list), but I don’t go out and watch them to see if I want to read them. The text and the cover does just fine for me.
But if it helps get the attention of other potential readers, for who book trailers are an effective way of making them want to read the book, then I don’t begrudge them the use of book trailers.
By: Fantasy Dreamer
I’ve seen a few good book trailers, that I have enjoyed. Do they influence me to buy the book? No. What influences me to buy a book is one or a combination of things: Book Blurb, book reviews, favorite author and sometimes the book cover. The way I look at a book trailer is similar to book made into a movie or TV show, they are never the same or equal.
By: Pam
I somehow think too it can ruin the book by giving too much away.
By: Amy @ My Friend Amy
They have gotten me interested in books, but I don’t watch a lot of videos on the internet in general.
By: Seth
Book trailers don’t do anything for me except insofar as they present a pleasing vehicle for book summaries and blurbs. But I can get those things from Amazon or the author’s website anyway, in text that’s more readable and without potentially distracting music and bells and whistles.
I guess the issue here for me is that I believe a “preview” of a piece of art should be in the medium of the actual art. We’ve got 30-second sample clips of music, movie trailers for movies, why can’t we stick to written cover pieces and book excerpts for books?
That’s my opinion as a reader–and as an aspiring writer of fiction. People with experience in book marketing might have a different take, and who knows, perhaps these trailers do appeal to the masses. They mostly just don’t work for me.
By: Pam
Wow that is a really cool take on things. I never thought of it that way.
By: I Heart Monster
A book trailer won’t convince me to buy a book. I don’t hate them either though… I kind of enjoy them, and usually they reinforce my preformed opinion of the book… but trailers have also changed my mind a couple of times, and I’m glad that I watched them.
I understand where you’re coming from with keeping the medium consistent, but people learn in different ways. Some people are visual learners and need images and some people are audible learners and need audio… others can learn just fine from reading… I think the trailers are good for targeting these different types of learners and give the book a larger audience exposure than it would have had otherwise… it’s all about marketing and moolah.
By: Steven Klotz
I’ve gotten a bit obsessed with book trailers over the last year, but I’ve always loved movie trailers, so that didn’t really come as a surprise. I MUCH prefer the style of the FIRST video you linked (more of what I’d call a teaser than a trailer), basically setting you on edge with the idea and then dropping a powerful blurb that would have basically been meaningless with no other context. The second one actually destroys they “faceless” cover that lets the reader inhabit that type of story.
My favorite trailer so far would be the one for Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. It gets at one of the core bits of the setting (what inspired the author, if you read the acknoledgements), and I can actually point to it as what pushed me over the edge to start the series that it represents the 3rd book of.
As for the “preview in the medium of the actual art,” My feeling on this is that most books are already multimedia experiences. Covers of science fiction and fantasy are rarely the single deciding factor on me buying a book, but they convey a ton of information about the type of book (I can usually name the subgenre at a glance). I’d say that the cover art is as different of a medium to literature as these video trailers, they’ve just been associated with books longer.
When I’m in the mood to watch random videos online, I’m VERY glad I can find book trailers in the mix. It’s much the same excitement that I get when I hear a new song by a singer I like on a TV show I’m watching. I guess I’ll circle back and agree that most of the time I’m interested in trailers for authors or series I’m already invested in, but a good trailer unquestionably whets my appetite.
By: Sarah
I realy enjoy book trailers. They haven’t convinvced me to buy a book, but they have gotten me interested in a book that I’d seen around but not heard much about because it gives me more insight into the plot. I’ve always loved movie trailers though, like Steven.
I think they are great for teens who might not pick up a book and might not listen to me when I booktalk a book, but they will watch a video and get interested.
I don’t like when they give too much of the plot away, but there are book blurbs that do the same thing.
By: heidenkind
I did buy a book because of a book trailer once–it was Simone Elkeles’ Perfect Chemistry, and it actually turned out to be great book!
By: Jennifer
Book trailers have no influence on my decision to buy a book, but I don’t mind them. In fact I’ve been a little inspired by the few book trailers that I have seen to create an extra credit opportunity for my students where they can read a book and create their own book trailer. I work with at-risk teens and its tough trying to get them to read anything let alone a book for pleasure, using technology to create book trailers might just be enough motivation to get some of my students to pick up a book. Who knows what creative masterpieces my students may come up with.
I too dislike seeing people on the cover of books. We live in a multicultural world, yet the number of book covers featuring caucasians far out weigh the number of covers featuring people of other ethnic backgrounds. A lot of authors don’t even make reference to skin color or ethnicity when they are writing, so the characters could be of any heritage but if the cover has a person on the front than readers will subconsciously picture the characters being of that ethnicity. In YA fiction, this is a particular problem because students will judge a book by its cover (don’t we all kind of do that from time to time in the bookstore and library) and pass by books that they think is only about “____” people (you fill in the ethnicity of your choice, my students usually complain that most books are about “white people”) because they think that they couldn’t possibly identify with whatever that person on the cover will experience in the book.