Wow, it's a great trailer but it isn't selling the book

Got an artsy idea for a trailer for your book. If so, maybe people will remember the trailer and forget the book:

http://tribalauthor.com/bad-book-trailers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TribalAuthor+%28Tribal+Author%29

Malcolm

I disagree completely with the article.

There are some intangibles involved, but also some boneheaded thinking.

For one thing, it was created by a national book council. Probably didn't cost the author anything. It's an ad for the fact that New Zealand has a book industry, as much as anything else. Were you previously aware of that? I wasn't.
So it can't really be judged by flat out sales figures (not that his use of those figures isn't a crock, but I'll get to that.)

I've seen this trailer before, really beautiful. The address was emailed to me. This is one of the few videos that actually qualitfies for the bandied-about "viral" term. People pass it around and it shows up with those zillions of views. All those people saw the name and author. It brought prestigious awards and attention to the NZ book industry. The video succeeded at a wildly elevated level. But that's supposedly a bad thing, according to this grumpster.

You look at those figures (and maybe somebody else knows what an amazon ranking means in terms of sales?) and it "looks bad". But a little thought shows other ways to interpret it.

He scoffs that most of the views were outside of New Zealand. (Well, kind of the point in promoting your national book industry, no?) but what that means is people outside the NZ market area were exposed to the book and bought it to whatever degree the amazon rankings indicate. Who outside of NZ would have bought the book otherwise?

Then he says there is no amazon in NZ. Oh... so he has no idea how many people bought the book in NZ? Maybe it's sold out three printings in stores there because its so famous and is now associated with a booster image of the country. If somebody told me it had become the best-selling book in the history of NZ publishing I wouldn't be surprised at all.

In fact, it's been highly awarded there and ranks among the top books in the country. (which I found out in like 20 seconds on Google) Of course, that's NZ, so 10,000 books is a LOT of sales. Of course that also means a small number of sales, like 10,000 copies internationally would mean a doubling of sales--that could only be explained by the presence and awesomeness of the video.
(I also see that book ranked 78,833 on amazon.uk, by the way, not the 101.000 this turkey attributes. Which could very well be an effect of the viral spread of the video. And the difference in sales numbers between those two rankings ALONE might be a really significant boost in income for the publisher and author.)

So. Gee. Was it worth making this beautiful thing and having a million people enjoy it?

I'd kind of have to think so. And I have to think Jonathon is all wet.

When I left NZ after a six months stay, I received a gift from a faculty member at the University of Otago. The leaving present was Plumb by Maurice Gee published by Oxford University Press. It won awards but did not become an international bestseller. This is the trailer to the film of Gee's book, In My Father's Den, starring Matthew MacFadyen:



Does it make you want to read the book or watch the film?

About Maurice Gee:

http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/geem.html

I posted about Maurice Gee on AbsoluteWrite but they were too aggressive and hostile to listen.

Interesting take, Lin. We do know one thing about Amazon sales for sure. If a book is listing at 2,434,322 before a trailer gets a lot of hits and is still listing at that number or worse, the trailer had little to no impact--unless there was a jump in sales elsewhere.

Malcolm

That seems like a likely bet. But that's certainly not the case here, is it?

Going West was published in 1994! Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (10 Jan 1994).

You can buy it on Amazon marketplace for 49p!

A funny thing happened on the comments thead for that article. All the posts had been echoing--yeah, yeah, it's a terrible video, doesn't work, sucks, yada yada

I posted the same comment I posted in this thread. Since doing so most of the comments have swung around the other way: yeah, gee, it's nice and is doing the job it was created to do.

I wonder if there is a "Kool Aid Anonymous" meeting online somewhere?

Many go with the flow.

Okay, Lin, I still think the video doesn't work as a commercial.

Malcolm

How aware were you, last week, of Maurice Gee and the New Zealand publishing industry?

I'm not aware of it now. That is, until I read the name in your message, I couldn't have told you who did the trailer without going back and looking.

Malcolml

Here's how it works to have a trailer out there, Malcolm. I received a message on a forum asking if I would be interested in having Mr. Planemaker's Flying Machine serialised on radio. In my response, I added a link to my video. The serialisation went ahead last year with 48 daily episodes over a ten week period. It wasn't Steven Spielberg asking for more information, but it might be for you. If you could point him in the direction of a trailer that had received thousands of views ...

Here's the link to the request I received:

http://forum.leylandtown.info/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=644&whichpage=11

So how about a video that isn't advertising anything?
http://www.aniboom.com/competitions/Awards4/429093/Monster-Clock/

My guess is that all the costs of all the trailers have exceeded by a fair amount the profits from all the books advertised in those trailers.

I'm just plain cynical about their value in spite of the fact that they have proven very helpful to some authors.

Malcolm

Well, I make mine myself and they bring in business.
The NZ one is multi-purpose and has pretty obviously had some effect.

As long as they keep bringing in business, keep doing them!

How about as long as they are fun to do, and are fun for lots of people, and create something beautiful?

This is the kind of exposure you get with a video:

http://article.wn.com/view/2010/03/27/Wizards_find_closure_with_Arenas_sentencing/

I run into all sorts of posts and comments about book trailers. Personally I like some of them and feel that they are a great marketing tool.

We recently marketed Author Kaylin McFarren's book trailer on many of the sites within our network and with very good results. Kaylin was very pleased.

I was just this last week contacted by a marketing firm that requested marketing on our sites for Joyce Meyer's new book and book trailer. That spoke loudly to me.

One of the things that we do when marketing a book trailer is make sure that the book trailer doesn't sent visitors to others sites, but rather to the authors site or page. Too many times I have seen book trailers send people to You Tube. What good is that? They just get lost from there.

When someone visits one of our sites and see's the book trailer, they view it from our site. Underneath the book trailer is information about the author, the book and a link to the authors site or authors page.

The bottom line is book sales. Do these trailers help? I believe that they do and that the more ways that a author can promote and market their books, the greater the chances for success.

Here's a example: http://the-greatest-gift.blogspot.com/