Novel Trailers And You

The Salton Sea Chronicles blogspot is back after a one-week hiatus, but with a successful launch of a new academic year, it is time to get back to blogging.

Today we look at novel trailers.

Just as legacy publishers staunchly believed self-publishing, ePublishing, and indie publishing represented fads, they used to look with jaundiced eyes at the idea of a novel trailer. Initially, the biggies saw doing so as deluded authors, not good enough for “real” publishing houses, buying real estate in cloud cuckoo land in a vain attempt to promote their not-good-enough work. They did not realize the industry shifted while they were resting on laurels.

Much to their chagrin, the novel trailer found its feet and, these days, NOT having one is a gasp-causing moment. What is a writer to do?

Fortunately iMovie makes creating a trailer frighteningly simple, but creating video—in general—has become child’s play, so call out the children and let make a trailer.

Two basic types of trailers exist: sales trailers and focus trailers.

Sales trailers have as their purpose to tease us and to create anticipation for a novel. We are talking commercials here. Printed books are going the way of the dodo and them book jackets too. The blurb on the cover we used to read to see if we wanted to drop cash on the book has been replaced with a video commercial. With that shift has come an entirely new “ethic” for what we present.

Take a look at Carolyn Arnold’s trailer for her novel Eleven:

Eleven by Carolyn Arnold

Hers is a commercial pure and simple to drum up interest in the novel and the result is a textbook example of how to do a trailer right. She gives us a feel for the plot, but leaves us wondering what happens next. Buy the book! The imagery gives us a feel for the tone of the novel. Buy the book! It ends with purchase/contact information. Buy the book!

Nicely done! THAT is what a sales trailer should do. Note also that the trailer is short. People have to make choices and making them sit through too much video is not the wisest idea. Make it happen and make it happen quickly.

The second type of trailer, the focus trailer, by contrast is longer and not intended for sales, but rather to focus the author.

To write The Salton Sea Chronicles: Violator, I assembled literally hundreds of photographs (some mine, some from the internet) to visualize the storyline. After finishing the novel and doing both an electronic (on screen correction) and a paper edit (print it out and make corrections), I incorporated those revisions and then asked how I wanted the novel to sound and feel. Take a look:

The Salton Sea Chronicles: Violator

I used Judas Priest’s A Touch of Evil as the defining song, and then sequenced the images—all in black and white and manipulated heavily for contrast and grain—into the storyline. When I finished, I had something that gave me the tone and pace of what I wanted the novel to accomplish. A focus trailer gives the author a running video in his head, but beyond that I wrote The Salton Sea Chronicles trilogy with an eye to movie or television production. For a variety of reasons—length and copyright issues—my focus trailer could not be used for sales. Mine is an author’s exercise and as such does not have the quality necessary for a sales trailer.

Now, get trailing!