Do Book Trailers Sell Books? Post your book trailer here!

[Pearson Oldmitz]

My friend, author Stephen Poleskie, recently had a book trailer made for his book VIGILIA'S TEMPEST. While it had over 700 hits on YouTube in the first months it was up, and has now passed 4300 hits, he is not quite sure how many sales this actually accounted for. Here is the link to his book trailer if you would like to check it out: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5eCVRnDw0

Let me know what your opinion is of the effectiveness of book trailers, positive or negative. Please feel free to post your book trailer here if you have one, or someone elses if you wish to comment on it.

Best wishes,

Pearson Oldmitz

[Shilpa Mudiganti]

Hello Pearson,

This can be a very interesting discussion. I am myself struggling with this decision for my book. I am doing some research here.

Book trailers is one of many new marketing strategies that seem to spring all around us. The key lies in making it professional and reaching as many audience as possible. While it seems to work well for some books (all major publishers coming up with book trailers for their successful authors) to hype their next book, there are many videos out there by other authors that doesn't seem to make much of a difference. As it is with the cover page, only a professional and well shot video would make any difference, if at all it does. For a debut author/selfpub/indie authors, this might mean extra expenses. Putting up a amateur video will only hamper his/her book. 

Therefore, as of now, I lean towards not making a video trailer. But my research is still on! Hope this helps!

Regards,

Shilpa

www.smmirza.blogspot.com

 

 

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Shilpa,

I talked about your reply with Steve Poleskie, so am posting some of his thoughts. We went over all the book trailers that we had seen and read the books, mostly before seeing the trailers. He told me how as a chid he hated illustrated books because they often didn't agree with the images of the characters as he had envisioned them while reading the text. I had to agree that I had felt the same way. Neither of us liked coloring books either, because we didn't like to color within the lines. We felt that trailers worked best if you haven't read the book first. As for attracting one to a book, that remains to be seen. Perhaps I will get some posted here that will make me want to read the book.

To make a 500 page book into a one minute spot is not an easy task. We are hoping to see some good ones come into this page, both amateur and professional. Poleskie's video was made by a professional company hired by the book's publisher. He had no input with the production of the images.

Best wishes,

Pearson

[Abraham Lopian and Julie Snyder]

You must have a book trailer on YouTube.  Google picks up YouTube videos with proper tags and links and places them above other similar web pages and links.  Our video has tags of "Bible Code" which has 7 million similar tags.  Our book trailer is now on page 2 in Google searches.  

I produced this Book Trailer with much thought, editing and emotion.  You know it is good when small tears stream down your cheeks after it's completed.

The Genesis Code: God Has Spoken

 

Thank you for watching,

Robert Machol, COO

The Genesis Code Team

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Robert,

Can I ask you why you have removed your video. No one seems to want to post their videos here. I thought that this would be a very popular discussion. Or does no one have videos to post?

Best wishes,

Pearson

[Matthew]

Hi Pearson,

As a reader/reviewer, I have to be honest and say that I am not a fan of promotional videos. The premise of a book can be summed up in a sentence, and beyond that it's the quality / style of the writing that interests me. I can see that trailers appeal to a different set of senses, but ultimately I'd never buy a book on the back of a video.

On the other hand, I think creating as many channels as possible for people to link back to your site/Amazon for summaries, reviews, snippets, etc. is essential. Although book trailers really don't appeal to me, they might help drag in some extra YouTube users, who aren't as involved with the book community.

My real issue is quality/cost. I think too many people over-reach with their trailers and they end up looking hammy. Most indie authors and small publishing houses can't afford to spend too much money on putting together a really good quality promotional video, so my advice for anyone is, if you're going to go down the trailer route, keep it simple.

Best wishes,

Matthew - Bibliofreak.net - A Book Review Blog

[Tara Calaby]

As a reader, I have zero interest in book trailers. I want to read about the book, not watch a promotional clip. That said, there are a lot of readers and bloggers who do like trailers, so I think it comes down to a case of whether or not you want to spend the promotional dollars on a trailer or other means of publicising a book.

Tara @ Agrippina Legit

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Tara,

I tend to agree with you. I am not all that interested in book trailers. This is one of the reasons I started this discussion as they seem to becoming very popular, and I am not sure why. Thank you for your reply.

I went to your web site and was very impressed. The site is quite handsome visually and the reviews carefully thought out and well written. I am pleased to have discovered it, and will check back regularly. I was surprised to learn that you are in Australia. Let's hear it for the internet.

Stephen Poleskie did have a story published in Australia several years ago entitled "Marta's White Painting." It was in the magazine IMAGO. You can read it on his web site www.StephenPoleskie.com. If you go there you might want to check out his other four novels. He still has review copies of his latest book, a novella and two short stories, "Acorn's Card" available. He joked that as it is only 128 pages he would be happy pay the postage to send you a copy. There is also a link on his site to a Polish-American magazine that has one of the stories from this book up on its blog. Let me know if you are interested, or you can contact Poleskie directly through a link on his web site.

Best wishes and keep up the good work,

Pearson

[Tara Calaby]

Thank you very much for the kind words :) I'm glad you enjoyed my blog. There are a surprising number of us Australian book bloggers out there, as I'm beginning to realise. It's handy when we're the last country to receive a new book release!

 

Your friend is a very accomplished artist and author! I enjoyed looking through his site. Unfortunately, I'm trying to focus on reviewing books for younger readers these days, so I'm not the best person to offer him a review, but I've definitely liked what I've seen, so thank you for introducing his work to me :)

[Pearson Oldmitz]

Hi Shawn,

It's been a while but I see that your trailers are still out there. The historical fiction one always seems to come up on the same page with Poleskie's VIGILIA'S TEMPEST. How are the books doing?

Best wishes,

Pearson

[Joseph Valentinetti]

The trailers are well done but more important is your application of them at events. It goes to what I've said about the value of a tool. You have to know how to use it for it to do you any good.

Joseph

[Grace]

I don't think that a trailer says much of anything about a book.  You can't grasp writing style from a video, so all that it says is that someone was willing to pay to make a video about said book.  That being said, I'm a bit biased, as I don't even normally care for television.

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Books Without Any Pictures

[Barbara Rayne]

I made one too just to reach somewhat wider audience: