BOOK SPECIAL.............. Judge a book by its trailer

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.

Shalini Umachandran

TOI24MAY15