Book Trailers

booktrailersMany books are launched these days with more than just a poster in a bookshop. In this multimedia age, many authors (and/or their publishers) are using publishers’ websites, FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube to capture the attention of their potential readers; especially those attuned to some sort of screen during the day. So this is a new way of selecting books which you may be interested in reading.

Thus it is often possible to find a short book trailer being used to launch or further promote a book. Some examples I recently came across included not only newer books like Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and City of Ember by Jeanne du Prau; but also included classics such as Number the Star by Lois Lowry.

I had shown these to a class – to give them ideas for presenting a review of the books they had been reading for Literature Circles. The impact was quite powerful as we discussed some of the elements trailers involved. In short bursts, they learned of several books they had not all read. As one girl commented when leaving the class, the trailers could influence their choice, as much as a powerful book cover – “If I had seen that one (Number the Stars) before choosing my novel, I would have chosen it!”

Of course, this was only a ‘snippetty’ use of book trailers, and a lot more discussion and instruction would need to follow before students could begin to create their own. It’s certainly given food for thought, though at this stage we might spend a bit of time looking and reviewing examples first.

Most certainly, I will need to look into posts like that at Crystal Booth’s blog – http://www.squidoo.com/booktrailers to get started.