Trailers. You see them everywhere. Books, movies, even some commercials are built like a teaser trailer, designed to get you hooked on something and go out and buy or watch it. Movie studios hire people to do nothing but create trailers for their movies. Those people get paid to pull the best pieces out of movies and put them all together with cool graphics and dramatic voice overs to entice the public to run out and buy a ticket.Authors have jumped on that bandwagon over the last few years, realizing that creating a trailer for their book would appeal to those who don't really read (yeah, there are non-readers out there). By pulling the best parts of their book and mushing them all together with cool graphics and dramatic voice overs, they've done something really cool: they've turned their query into a movie.
Think about current movie trailers you see on TV. They take tiny snippets from the movie - whether it be a sound clip or a spooky face or whatever - that they know will have viewers saying "hmmm, that sounds interesting" or "I wonder what this is all about", while simultaneously introducing us to the main characters and the basic problem he or she faces. Isn't that what a query is supposed to do? Introduce the main character(s), show what major problem he/she faces, and hook an agent? Sounds like the same premise to me.
So my question is, what about us writing "hopefuls" taking our queries and turning them into book/movie trailers? Maybe agents could make the shift to watching queries instead of reading them...I'm sure they'd be much more interesting! What do you guys think?
Oh, and in case you may be interested, here's the trailer for my debut YA novel, BLOOD BORN.
Note: For some reason the embed didn't work, so here's the link to the trailer on YouTube:
Note: For some reason the embed didn't work, so here's the link to the trailer on YouTube:
6 comments:
Hey Jamie--I tried to fix your embed code problem, but got a message that my browser wouldnt accept the code. I think Blogger is feuding with Youtube or some changes were made that hasn't been addressed.
GREAT trailer though. AWESOME! One of the best trailers I've seen. It perfectly describes the start of your book and is enthralling. I can't even imagine what it would feel like to wake up buried in a coffin.
Thanks for sharing it. Who did you trailer?
Ooh,great trailer! I'm a really visual person so I love the idea of using trailers for queries. Why not? One like yours would surely grab some attention.
Jamie, what a rocking idea! And BTW, your trailer gave me chills, mister! Who did it? Loved the swimming font. NICE.
Interesting idea Jamie! I wonder how agents would feel about it. The problem is, just like book trailers, good books can have bad trailers and vice versa. But I guess the same can go for query letters. I wonder how things will change in the future. I'm guessing agents will still want to actually read stuff, but who knows?
Thanks for the comments, you guys. I was very fortunate to have a friend with an amazing talent to create such an amazing trailer! His name is @BrianLButler (Twitter) and he did an outstanding job, so I'm glad it's being well-received!
These have been popping up a lot lately, but are still a pretty fresh idea. In the nearish future, I would love to see a lot more information on the subject and maybe a crash course in 'Successful Book Trailers'.. since poorly done trailers would not only waste money, but also dissuade potential readers.
Thanks so much for the post!
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