What They “Forgot” to Tell You About Book Trailers

They Claim: Millions of people watch movie trailers and go to movies. Won’t the same idea work for books?

Definition: A video that promotes a book using the same storytelling techniques that movies use. Videos are posted on your website and on YouTube and/or other video sharing sites. The goal is to create interest in your book and make sales.

Truth-o-meter: Daniel Pink had barely 2,000 view of the trailer for his best-selling book, “Selling Is Human.” That’s not a lot of views.

Discussion: Book trailers are expensive to produce, but they don’t sell books because very few people watch them.

Have you?

I’ve seen a few. They are beautiful and brilliant. They are as wonderful as movie trailers.

But no one watches them.

You have to have a big following to get people to watch or do anything – including drive traffic to your book trailer. If you don’t have that following, then give up now. If you do have a big following, investigate if that’s the best use of your money. How many books or widgets would you have to sell to recoup your investment?

Bottom Line: There are better places to spend your marketing dollars.