We all know about movie trailers, a great marketing tool to convey in a minute or less, the essence of a movie with the hooks to (hopefully) draw audiences to watch the full feature.
Well now we have book trailers, and their popularity has been growing over the years. Indie authors and established publishing houses alike are using the technological tools now easily accessible on the internet to produce (mostly) inexpensive book trailers, setting out on that elusive trail to convince people to read more.
While creating my own book trailer for The Benevolent Deception, I spent time research what had been done before me. Many book trailers are really not that good, but there are exceptions, and they are definitely getting better. In no particular order, here are ten book trailers that show the diversity of book trailers out there from many different genres, that I thought were rather neat.
Jinny & Cooper: My Teacher’s Big Bad Secret, by Tania Ingram
Book aimed for young children, this one uses some animations of the characters illustrated by Tony Flowers appearing in the book, and notably animated by Tania’s husband, Stuart Ingram.
Blue Remembered Earth, by Alastair Reynolds
An epic space opera from the highly-successful science fiction writer, Alastair Reynolds. The publishers obviously paid a lot for this trailer. Probably did so because this was the start of a new trilogy, but definitely worthwhile.
The Kingdom of Assassins, by Erik MacKenzie
This trailer nicely captures all the visual elements of a political thriller set in the Middle East. I’m not sure if the author put it together himself, but he did a damn fine job of if he did. I know he’s a Manga artist, so I wouldn’t put it past him that he did.
Lily Alone, by Jacqueline Wilson
A young adult fiction trailer that has all the production values of a movie trailer, you would think it was a movie trailer. Really captures the emotion elements you need in any book trailer.
A Delicate Truth, by John le Carré
Another professional publisher produced a book trailer for one of Britain’s most successful spy fiction authors. Nicely captures Cold War era paranoia.
Love Minus Eighty, by Will McIntosh
Very simple but very effective trailer for a near future science fiction novel. Will McIntosh’s novel is based on a great story which won the Hugo Award.
A simple and elegant animated trailer for probably Japan’s greatest author.
The Wolves of Mercy Falls, by Maggie Stiefvater
A quirky but highly effective stop motion book trailer, which engages by the quirky, elegant way it was put together. You don’t learn much on what the book is about, except there are wolves, boys and trees, but captivating nonetheless.
Day of Reckoning, by Stephen England
This one starts out with the possibility of going in either direction, being great or terrible, but ultimate results in an impressive trailer that combined both video imagery and straight text. A kind of hybrid trailer between what you can do with high end and low end video production values.
Very cool professional video for a special ops novel in the Middle East, using lots of stills yet creating the impression of moving images.
Thanks to Samuel Carver of the Orion Team for directing me to various trailers used in this article.
Aiden L Bailey 