If you were around for the early days of MTV, you recall the novelty of watching music artists perform on your TV, rather than just through your speakers. There was a wide range of quality, and formats. Simple fare, like Robert Palmer’s iconic Addicted to Love, but lots of junk too. (Milli Vanilli, anyone?)
It was a period of experimentation and everyone was rushing to this new form of marketing. Fortunately, the medium evolved quickly due in part to the competition for slots on MTV.
TrailerShelf is aiming to do something similar for book trailers. The book video trailer is a book marketing tactic that has struggled the past few years as junk videos flooded the market and gave them a bad rap. The difference now (or opportunity) is to showcase the best.
In this brief interview with Jared Drake, co-founder of TrailerShelf, he explains why they thought a curated book trailer site was the answer, what it means to create a quality video, and how publishers are reacting.
Jared, along with his wife Julia, are UCLA film school graduates so they know a couple things about making professional videos.
David: Why launch a curated book trailer website?
Jared: Video is a driving force of online engagement in today’s day and age of digital media consumption. So we wanted to combat the stigma that book trailers aren’t a viable promotional tool for authors, and showcase videos that deliver an engrossing visual experience.
We felt there were two things necessary before publishers fully embrace video as a marketing tool:
One is that video aggregation websites such as Youtube and Vimeo don’t have sales links built into the video’s page. When a user on Trailershelf watches your trailer, they’re offered purchase links for all bookstores directly on the page. All they need to do is click. You don’t want to captivate a user for three minutes only to send them elsewhere, and possibly get lost on the way.
The other is quality. That’s why we decided to subject each submission to a review process rather than try to turn the website into a free search engine of sorts. Perhaps the videos that are posted will encourage and inspire other publishers and authors to take their video game to the next level.
What does it take to create a successful book trailer?
You need great storytelling that teases readers’ imagination without taking away from their ability to create their own world, in their heads.
At the same time, we’d like to see authors move beyond the overused collection of random images set to bad music. Trailershelf is interested in all video-based promotion for books, including book trailers, author videos, commercials or other new concepts of using video to get readers interested in their next must-read.
I can give you 2 examples of what I mean:
- Time Zero: Does a great job highlighting the social context of the book, as well as establishing the main character and her primary obstacle:
2. Second Chance: Establishes a strong personal connection with the author, making her struggle relatable for any reader considering these issues:
What has been the reaction so far?
Very positive. There is no question that there is a large number of authors out there with book trailers that have no outlet for them. Although we just launched the site, were already receiving 30-40 submissions a week, ranging from small to high budgets and many of them very creative.
Readers can explore videos by release date, genre, bestseller status, popularity, and staff picks. We’ve already been approached about showcasing premier book trailers and video advertising specific to book promotion.
While submission to TrailerShelf is currently free, every video goes through close inspection and is held to the highest standards before being approved for the site. In the future, TrailerShelf will offer sponsored placements as well as an annual book trailer award given out at the Wildbound Film Festival (dedicated to book adaptations), held in October in Lake Tahoe.
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For more information on TrailerShelf, including how to submit a video for consideration, please visit TrailerShelf.com.