Judge a book by its trailer
Cocktail launches are so yesterday. Authors are
now using a completely novel way of marketing their books -the video trailer
Bollywood has often taken inspiration from books
but now writers are bor rowing a page from the industry . In the last couple of
weeks, three authors who have a reputation for being bankable--Amish, Anuja
Chauhan and Karan Bajaj--have released trailers for their forthcoming books and
have been racking up the likes and shares.Like the makers of film trailers,
many authors and publishers have cottoned onto the fact that there's nothing
like a good teaser to reel in the readers.
On May 8, a full month and a half before its
launch date of June 22, bestselling author Amish had Bollywood director Karan
Johar release a trailer for his upcoming `Scion of Ikshvaku', the first of his
Ram Chandra series for which he received an advance of Rs 5 crore in 2013 from
publisher Westland. Within a week, it had notched up more than 46,000 views on
YouTube.
“A trailer is a good way to intrigue the
reader,“ says Amish, who plans to edit down the two-and-ahalf minute trailer
and release it in theatres after the book is launched.The budget was similar to
that of a mid-size Bollywood film trailer. “My books gross about Rs 30 to 40
crore, which is like a mid-size Bollywood film, so the trailer requires the
same kind of planning and budget,“ he says of his trailer that makes generous
use of CGI to create showers of fiery arrows, glinting swords and stomping
armies.
Amish and thriller writer Ashwin Sanghi (The
Rozabel Line, Chanakya's Chant) were among the pioneers of the book trailer in
India.Essentially, a book trailer is a marketing tool that helps publishers
share news about a forthcoming release online and on social media.Head of
marketing at Penguin Random House India Caroline Newbury says it fits into a
marketing campaign in a variety of ways. “It may provide more specific
information about the book or an overview of its contents. It may feature the author
talking about their work, or it may even work to simply give people a sense of
the atmosphere and tone of the book,“ she says.
Author and advertiser Anuja Chauhan, who is
launching `The House that BJ Built', the sequel to her best-seller `Those
Pricey Thakur Girls' on May 25, put out a trailer ten days in advance, getting
close to 2,000 views in a day. “The trailer is a projection of the characters
in my book. The idea is to push the pre orders but frankly, I had fun making
it,“ says Chauhan, who also made one for her first book `The Zoya Factor'. She
says scripting and making the films aren't too hard for her with her
advertising background and describes the making of the trailer as “a little
thing done in our own Forrest-Gumpish way“.
The style of the trailer depends on the kind of
book and, of course, the budget. Amish's big-budget affairs are replete with
deep-throated, Hollywood-style voiceovers, shadowy figures and glimpses of
battle shot on location, the focus being on building suspense and therefore
sales. Then there are authors like Karan Bajaj who appear in their trailers--as
he does for his novel `The Seeker' about an investment banker who becomes a
yogi--and make a direct appeal to readers. He asks fairly universal
questions--have you ever felt something was missing from your life--with the
hint that this book will somehow provide answers. At the other end are the
lighter, more conversational trailers like Anuja Chauhan's, where the feisty
characters are lent a voice and the idea is to pique curiosity and draw readers
into a familiar setting.
To an old-world reader, a trailer might seem
like it's against the grain of a book--which is supposed to leave entire worlds
to your imagination-but publishers say the visuals take nothing away from the
words. “Like any good film trailer, a book trailer reveals only enough to
entice the potential reader but doesn't give away too much of the plot,“
explains Amrita Talwar, senior marketing manager, Harper Collins India.
Book trailers have been part of the international
publishing world for close to a decade though they're just finding space here.
The US has been hosting the Moby Awards for Book Trailers since 2010 with such
delightful honours as `Book Trailer Least Likely to Sell a Book' and `Worst
Performance by an Author' in a trailer.In case you're a debut author who's been
cornered into standing against a screen and babbling about writing and plots,
an award of this kind is sure to crush any confidence you managed to muster up.
That's why publishers say they're careful about
choosing the books for which they make trailers. “A publisher usually makes a
trailer for a book when there is an expectation of commercial success and when
the author has the kind of following that will enjoy the excitement it generates,“
says Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland, which is rolling out 600,000 copies
of `Scion of Ikshvaku' next month.
Readers are no longer just in bookstores and
libraries, so trailers are the way to find them on their smartphones and other
devices. There's no way yet to measure whether the trailers translate into
sales. “It is always difficult to directly link a trailer to sales,“ says
Newbury. “It may have been the main driver for someone to go and buy the book,
or may have helped with general awareness which eventually leads to a
purchase.“ Looks like the trailer's been made, but the reviews aren't in yet.
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Shalini Umachandran
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TOI24MAY15
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