When I first heard the term “book trailers”, I thought it a curious concept. A book trailer is the show vs. tell throw down taken to the next level. But to be honest, I had visions of badly done Powerpoint slides crammed with too much text and ridiculous clip art. Boy was I wrong.
The first one I stumbled across accidentally. I don’t even remember how or where I saw it but I clicked on the link and watched it. I was enthralled. This was a fascinating way of getting the book’s essence across, better than the query even. Now, I don’t think literary agents will ever scrap the query since it’s 100% from the same medium as the book, however, I do think that authors who have a firm grasp on the mood of their story AND who are able to transfer that to a clip of less than two minutes will have a leg up.
I’ve always had visual and audio associations in my head for my novel, The Previously Undetected Recruiting Error or The PURE as I call it. (I do wish the public was familiar with the term PURE. I googled it and discovered that this wasn’t a term limited to my former employer.) I’ve had celebrity photos and YouTube music clips of these associations on my blog since the beginning. Now the opportunity to meld them was in my lap. Continue reading
Claire Gillian 