Yesterday I took a brief look at book trailers. Uninvoked stopped by and relayed her experience with trying to get the word out and how if a trailer looping endlessly in cyberspace is all well and good, but worthless if no one sees it. Here is her comment:
I don’t think many people know to look for the trailer. I’m finding my biggest problem with Uninvoked isn’t keeping my readers, but finding them. The idea of placing a book online is almost unheard of in itself, even though there is a rather large community of blogging novelists—if you know where to look.
Anything that draws attention to a book can be useful in the right circumstances, but a book trailer isn’t going to do you any good if no one ever sees it. To see it they have to find it. -.- See what I mean?
I would agree, but I think there is hope. It involves the harnessing of social media. I’m sure everyone has been bombarded with blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest. HOWEVER, they can work for you with minimal effort. If you already blog, you are ahead of the game. If you respond to comments in a timely manner, all the better. You can have your blog post directly to your Facebook page using the notes application (This works for any blog, not just wordpress blogs). You can use Twitterfeed to have your blog feed right to your Twitter account (make sure you read the help section for putting the right URL in the feed).
Have a trailer? Look to the usual suspects for posting it (You Tube, Viddler, Google Video), then pimp it all over your blog and Facebook and Twitter and anything else in which you are active. If you don’t take an interest in your own work, why should anyone else. It’ll take a little while for your efforts to gain momentum, but once they do, you’ll be grinning a whole lot more when you check your blog and web stats.
It’s all about casting a wide net and being involved. While this is a form of marketing, it has the element of engagement–of dialogue–that traditional wait and see stuff can never hope to have.