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On Book Trailers

I’m still a little fuzzy as to how we live in a world where book trailers exist.  Do people really watch these things?  I’ve never seen one tweeted, posted to Facebook, etc.  And it’s not like I don’t know people who read.

Maybe it’s a logical extension of cover art.  You’ve got your text.  You want to give someone a sense of what’s inside, and you want to do so in fractions of seconds.  Sword, glowy magic, vaguely celtic rune thing. Vector illustration of a thin, racially-neutral woman smiling while walking.  Black and white picture of some dudes in uniform.

(This leads to some trends, of course.)

With the creation and distribution of video content becoming less expensive by the moment, why not extend this to a trailer?  Makes sense, I suppose.

I’m currently reading Zero History.  Haven’t read any Gibson since Neuromancer, and wanted to see what’s up.  Not only did I not realize it was part of loose series, I didn’t realize it was about clothes.  Clothes.  The surprise has been part of the enjoyment for me; would I have picked it up from the trailer?

 

 

Not watching works if you’re gonna read the book anyway and like to go in blind.  But in most cases, why not watch?  It’s no more than you’re going to get from a blurb or a review.

And the next question — when I finish my current project, do I have to make one of these things?  Man, I hope not.

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