And I couldn’t even make it through the video!

I’ve got mixed feelings about video trailers for books. On the one hand, anything that succeeds in drawing new audiences to books is a good thing for the industry as a whole. On the other hand, it does seem to me to be slightly counterintuitive. People disposed to buy books generally have certain habitual strategies for finding new books to buy, and I seriously doubt that hunting down video trailers is ever going to become one of those strategies — because a trailer can tell you very little about the qualities that make a book appealing.

Before someone comments that everyone looks for different things in a book, let me note that it seems fans of romance, fans of sci-fi, fans of “literature” and fans of ethnographies all tend to express similar desires: novel (or at least freshly interpreted) material and ideas, and an engaging writing style. At best, video can only inform you about the first of these two expectations, and I do wonder if the mere act of transferring the material to the televisual medium might in some cases dull the innovative aspect of the plot anyway — since television has different constraints than the novel form, it has already done a lot that many books don’t do (and, of course, vice-versa also holds, but I’m not sure video could capture the uniqueness of, say, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius — or Untie my Heart (Judith Ivory) — or A Fine Balance.

still pondering the viral thing,
Kate by way of BSC