Booktrailers on a Budget: Feel the Magic

There’s some question about whether book trailers help sell books. Until that question is definitively answered, it seems to me that one wouldn’t want to blow one’s entire advertising budget on trailers.

The repurposing award goes to romance author Tessa Dare:

She gets an additional credit for this one, which was a fundraiser auction item to help a fellow writer in need:

Maggie Stiefvater, who writes YA paranormals, is so relentlessly creative and funny that you don’t even notice that her books aren’t mentioned until the last three seconds:

She also does a good line in playdough stop-action. I understand the labor involved, but I still wish this one was longer:

But Jeff Somers, author of the dystopian Avery Cates series (which I’ve reviewed extensively), not only ropes people in with his hilarious Ask Jeff Anything vids, which cost nothing but time and dignity,  but has recently asked his fans to do the work for a very specific kind of series trailer:

Explanation, if necessary, is here.*

What do you think?  Are book trailers effective?  Are expensive book trailers more effective? Does it even matter, as long as there are handpuppets and trews involved? Do you have a favorite example to share?

___________

* I have to be a part of this and am planning on using handpuppets in a way Tessa Dare would probably not approve.

Advertisement

Happy International SysAdmin Day!

They are all too often the unsung, where-the-hell-have-you-been heroes of the digital age.

They are the reason I can publish a post on this blog and that you can read it and comment on it (ahem).  They are the reason you can send an e-mail to someone, or receive it.  Or play WOW.  Or google.

They’re that good.

They are the reason you can access what you need when you need it—and\or the reason you can miraculously access it this morning when everything went blue-screen belly-up yesterday because of something you don’t even know you did.

Retrievers of files, repairpersons of abused workstations, destroyers of malware, and the one group of people (besides administrative assistants) with whom it behooves you to be on friendly terms. 

Most of them are way cooler than you are anyway.

These are the people who can reset passwords, figure out why your sharepoint documents just disappeared, and fit you out with a keyboard that doesn’t eject the Alt key when you hit the spacebar (true story). 

They may even ‘forget’ to tell Admin that you’re the one sucking all the bandwidth watching Miley Cyrus’s latest pole dance on YouTube while you’re supposed to be doing spreadsheets.  You know who you are.

Remember:  The SysAdmin pluggeth and the SysAdmin can unpluggeth.

So go hug your IT people today.  If you prefer to hug metaphorically, bring them doughnuts and their caffeine source of choice.  A bottle of Excedrin may also be appreciated.  So is more budget and a lot more respect . . . but Excedrin helps.

Or just don’t  open any attachments today.  Or access anything.  Or break anything .  No ID-10-T errors today, please.  Go completely analog if you have to.  This is their day.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the Network trenches!  We really, truly appreciate everything you do. 

And all the things you could do . . . but don’t.