Video trailers for book promotion?
I’m not as extreme about my book promotion efforts as James Patterson (he is extreme, in many ways!), but I do have one video trailer (unlike Patterson’s efforts, it won’t interrupt your TV experiences). As Garcia Marquez did with Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I’ll also tell story of the Death on the Danube video trailer in reverse.
First, the improvement in sales figures have been pathetic: This video trailer had 78 views three years ago on YouTube (I have no idea if that’s over the last three years or just those from three years ago—YouTube is a bit lax on honest reporting). Of course, I don’t publicize the trailer. You’ll find its link on a couple of web pages at this website, and that’s it! Doesn’t seem like the epitome of absurdity to even think of publicizing a video trailer, something that’s supposedly designed to publicize a book? In any case, I don’t do it! (Unless you call this article that?)
Second, that video trailer is a bit misleading. In a sense, that’s my fault: I okayed the final version (brought to you by Castelane, by the way, to give a very nice lady due credit); but in hindsight, the novel Death on the Danube comes across in the video as a bit too much like a romantic cozy, one of those fluffy mysteries that many serious readers (including me!) avoid reading. It’s not a cozy, though. In fact, it’s the third novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series and the first one that has mostly an anti-fascist and anti-Putin theme. (It led the way for later novels in the same series and the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy.) It’s about a team of SVR assassins loose on a riverboat filled with tourists, including the honeymoon couple of Esther and her Dutchman, Bastiann van Coevorden (modern versions of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, according to wags in Scotland Yard). (The role of the riverboat is clearer in the trailer; it’s not the “Love Boat,” despite the many couples on it, including the SVR agents!)
Revenge can bite you on the butt when it’s your main motivation: The Last Humans, that a novel published by Black Opal Books, won a book award, a free trailer, but I was in the middle of some skirmishes with that small press about publishing the second novel in the series, so I thought: Why give Black Opal free publicity? (Small presses rarely help authors with book publicity, by the way.) So, I made the swap, and Death on the Danube got the trailer. (The latter’s publication also was a response to yet another tiff between yours truly and my other small press, Penmore—I ended up self-publishing both it and later Brookstone novels, as well as the remaining novels in “The Last Humans” trilogy.)
Penny Castro (the main character in The Last Humans, Black Opal Books, 2019) won more accolades for my writing than Esther Brookstone did by that time (the second novel in the Brookstone series was Son of Thunder, Penmore Press, 2019), so it made sense to make the swap because Esther needed the publicity. While the quality of the video trailer is good, and it took so little of my time and none of my money, it made little difference in book sales figures. I can’t recommend putting such video trailers in your book promo budgets, though. (By the way, James Patterson probably doesn’t pay for his either.) End of the chronicle.
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“The Last Humans” trilogy. Penny Castro, ex-USN SAR diver and LA County forensics diver comes up after locating a body only to find a world gone mad. These three novels follow her post-apocalyptic adventures as she struggles to survive, create and defend her family, and deal with the few leaders who remain on Earth. The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow are available wherever fine ebooks are sold. (The first novel is even available in print format, but you might have to buy it from Black Opal.)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!