If you have ever watched a movie trailer, these aren’t much different. They exist for a number of reasons: Title recognition, name recognition for the author, and the desire to give an idea of what the book is about in a way that entices the watcher to want to buy the book and read for themselves. Some are done very well, others are done very poorly.
I have found that some of the least appealing are the ones James Patterson puts on television ads. I am not sure why, since I know for a fact he has several much better ones for the same book in many cases. For whatever reason, he fails to tell you anything of value about his books when he does a television ad.
I have a hard time understanding what he is going for since he certainly doesn’t need name recognition and isn’t drawing any real interest in the subject of the book without telling you anything about the plot of the story. All I can think is that he is just using these ads to draw in his existing readers to let them know about the latest book. Even so, I think he would be better off doing it with one of his more informative book trailers.
When I have a publisher for either Hike Not Alone or for Ill’ln, I plan to do a book trailer for them as well. Until then, I have pulled a few interesting looking book trailers to give you an idea of what these are if you have no experience with them.
Book Trailer Examples
The above does a good job of giving a very bare-bones synopsis of the three books. It hits on three levels of recognition because it not only names the series and the individual books along with the author’s name, but also shows you what each of the covers looks like for when you go into the store to buy. I would have liked more information about the storyline, but even so it is a good example.
This one shows some really interesting visuals and tells you a lot about what you can expect if you read the book. There is going to be a clear draw for anyone interested in this kind of story.
This would be one of the examples I listed above of what Patterson was putting on television. Seriously? I know he can do better. Look at the one below to see how much more powerful most of his book trailers are. I have never seen the one below on the TV, but it would have made a much bigger impact on me as a buyer than the one above that did make it on.
Hopefully this has given a few people insights they didn’t have before and if you are an author yourself, then perhaps it will give you food for thought on your own possible book trailers.