Discussion posts are some of my favourite posts to read. New ideas get shared that way, or old ideas are revisited and given a new spin. And of course, I get to be my opinionated self as I hoist my views upon others, while pretending to be objective. Or maybe not. I do welcome alternate views and I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
After my very lengthy post yesterday, where I analysed book trailers of books I’ve already read, I kinda wondered how others feel about trailers. I mean, by and large, I don’t go hunting down book trailers. I don’t recall seeing any of my friends share book trailers on social media platforms either. Movie trailers, all the time. Book trailers, never. So, before I share where I stand, please be so kind and answer the following poll:
Thank you for participating in my very informal by hopefully informative poll! Please feel free to elaborate your thoughts with a comment, especially if you don’t watch book trailers to begin with. ‘Cause if you don’t, I’d really like to know why. Think about it, if nobody watches them, then filming is just the grandest waste of time and money.
Now, how do I feel about book trailers? I generally don’t watch them. When I took it upon myself to look for 26 trailers that returned with 9 results, I still ended up watching more book trailers in a day than I have in the preceding year. Plus, I had already read those books, so there was no potential of gaining an additional reader anyway.
Thinking about why I don’t really watch book trailers, I could come up with the following reasons:
- They’re not everywhere. In other words, they’re not on TV along with all the other commercials that bombard us everyday; they’re also not widely shared among my friends online.
- When I look up a book, I look for the synopsis, usually on Goodreads or Amazon. Occasionally I visit author’s website. If they don’t embed book trailers, then there’s no “play” button for me to click.
- While I can’t say I intentionally avoid them, I don’t think I want to specifically look for them either. I like my imagination to stay intact when I read a book. This is why I have been avoiding all Divergent movie trailers, posters, or basically any visuals related to the movie. I have yet to receive my (pre-ordered!) copy of Allegiant in the mail, so I’d like to maintain my vision of the Divergent world just a while longer. You know, until after I’ve had the opportunity to read Allegiant.
- Lastly, it rarely crosses my mind to look for them. Books are made up of words. Why would I think to look for moving images?
The whole idea of book trailers doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s not like a movie, where you’re actually getting a glimpse of what you’ll be getting if you read/watch it. A book trailer can only tell you what the book is about… but whether I’m going to enjoy a book or not has as much if not more to do with the way it’s written. And a book trailer can’t capture that. So why waste my time?
(Plus, the couple that I have seen just seemed a little ridiculous. That could have been because I was already put off by the idea of them… but I doubt it.)
This is why I’m thinking that perhaps they are an unfortunate misnomer. Trailers are for movies and TV shows. Everything else are commercials. Maybe if they were pitched as book commercials, rather than book trailers, then their content would become more appropriate to selling books, so people would stop trying to repackage the content of a book into movie-like scenes.
I’ve only watched a handful of book trailers over the years and most of them have seemed amateurish. Maybe I’m just not looking at the right ones, but overall, I haven’t been really impressed.
Yeah, that’s true. Although, looking at book trailers again, I noticed that the standard seems to have gone up. Maybe it’s worth taking another look? That is, if the production quality turned you off, rather than the concept of a book trailer.