In this weekend's
New York Times, Pamela Paul tackles the topic of the "de rigueur" book trailer (
"The Author Takes a Star Turn"), citing the recent YouTube moments of, among others, Mary Karr, Jeannette Walls, and Kelly Corrigan. To quote from the story:
But in the streaming video era, with the publishing industry under relentless threat, the trailer is fast becoming an essential component of online marketing. Asked to draw on often nonexistent acting skills, authors are holding forth for anything from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, frequently to the tune of stock guitar strumming, soulful violin or klezmer music. And now, those who once worried about no one reading their books can worry about no one watching their trailers. (A mother still nursing her 8-year-old: 25,864,943 views; recent best-selling maternal memoirist: 5,124 views.)
I read the piece with great interest, as I read all stories about the marketing (and fate) of books with great interest. I read it with a flush in my face. Citing book trailer budgets of up to $15,000, I thought of my own budgets (no pennies, just my time, which I leave others to value), my own resources (the photographs I know how to take and the video I don't), my own technology (iMovie, after I lost patience with Final Cut during one particularly hot, sweaty day), my own music choices (severely limited by lack of budget and lack of personal composing/performing/recording capabilities, though I do hum a mean "Twinkle, Twinkle"), my own microphone (which is attached to my unportable computer, which sits on my glass-topped desk in my glass-surround office), my own vision (and how sorely it compares to the final product), my own un-desire to sit in front of my little Apple camera and interview myself (what a monumental bore, I think, to interview myself), and my own aims (to tell someone out there what the book is about in 90 seconds or less).
Had I thought, for example, about how hard it would be to create a trailer for my upcoming historical novel,
Dangerous Neighbors, I might have thought twice (I'm saying
might have, only) before signing up for all the difficulties that simply writing the book entailed. Because how, in fact, does a woman like me—lacking budget, lacking video talent—recreate the kaleidoscopic quality of that book? The skating on the Schuylkill River, circa 1876. The digging for clams at the Cape May beach in the era's bathing costumes. The fire that swept through Shantytown. The massive grandiosity of the Centennial grounds themselves. The Laurel Hill Cemetery in winter, as it was then, not as it is now. How does one talk about twin sisters, when there are no 18 year old twin sisters in sight, and nothing late nineteenth century to dress them in?
Dangerous Neighbors is a book in which high color is thematic and the pace ever quickens; the images from 1876—still images—are black and white and grainy.
Dangerous Neighbors features a baker's boy who rescues lost animals from the streets of Philadelphia. Can one let a pig loose in Rittenhouse Square?
The "de riguering" of book trailers is, I think, a fascinating development, and I myself watch many trailers—applauding and admiring and, yes, envying writers like Maggie Stiefvater—writer, artist, musician, film maker—who can do it all. This is not to say that there isn't much I can still learn, much I can work against, much I must transcend. I'm in the book business and so, alas, I must crack the code on video problems that have, until now, proved confounding.
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