Brilliance Penetrates Our Lack of Sleep

April 5th, 2005 · 4 Comments
by Booksquare

Day Three. The lack of sleep is setting in. People are starting to talk backwards. The world is filled with crazy notions. At least one person has sworn he sees the future. We dismiss him as crazy until we realize he’s not. We stop and stare. It almost makes sense:

Over the last few years, many book authors have discovered that they can increase awareness of themselves and their works by maintaining an online presence, often in the form of a blog. But until recently, the opportunity for using the web’s multimedia capabilities for book promotion has been limited.

Now that is changing. With the advent of services like VidLit, which produces short, humorous, animated Flash films about books, authors have a new way to reach online readers. Because of the viral quality of online videos, some writers are finding success at the end of the broadband pipe.

Ah, a worthy successor of the electronic press kit. This one we like very much.

File Under: Tools and Craft

4 responses so far ↓

  • Ed // Apr 5, 2005 at 9:52 am

    All insomniacs see the future, whether it is their will or not. Perhaps it is the mind forcing the body into a certain dreamy sensory mode to retain a certain perspective that has been lacking in their everyday existence. But it’s much better, I think, then a casual drug habit.

    In any event, hope you get some zees/zeds soon.

  • Brenda Coulter // Apr 5, 2005 at 10:09 am

    Vid-lit sure sounds sexy, but maybe we should slow down and remind ourselves that before people can view a book’s “trailer”, they must first be enticed to the author’s website or blog. I’m afraid promoting books through vid-lit on the web will, in most cases, be very much like screening “coming attractions” to an empty theatre.

  • Booksquare // Apr 6, 2005 at 8:32 am

    What I’m thinking is that there is more potential for vid-lit than an author’s website. Using Flash as an example (and here’s where I display the sum total of my knowledge about Flash), the files are small. Publishers could use these short films as advertisements on their sites or other sites. They could be burned onto CDs (heck, a compilation of films) and given away at trade shows or conferences or mailed to reviewers as part of regular promotional activities, heck they can even be put into magazines or newspapers.

    Traditional promotion doesn’t seem to be working — this is actually a great way to let readers learn more about a book (see today’s post about the NYT section that doesn’t even go that far…so not helpful!).

  • Brenda Coulter // Apr 6, 2005 at 5:03 pm

    Well, again, as far as showing the things on publishers’ and authors’ websites, the trick is getting people to those sites in the first place. And if people are already there, a VidLit presentation would be superfluous. But while it seems to me that using the things for advertising elsewhere on the web would be very expensive (I’m guessing–we don’t see that many video ads for any other products) I absolutely love your idea about the CD giveaways. Publishers could promote several titles at a time.

    I bet you eat a lot of fish, dontcha, Booksquare? Just like Jeeves.