Writer's Grove

Stuff They Never Told Me About Publishing #3

This series chronicles all the stuff I’m finding out about the publishing business in the months leading up to my debut.* If you missed the first couple installments, #1 is here and #2 is here. Shall we on?

I don’t know how to make a book trailer.

And from what I can tell, few people do. The existence of book trailers escaped my notice until I saw other writers here and there talking about them on their blogs. There are a lot of bad trailers out there. There are also some pretty good ones—the high-budget stuff from this list of Moby Awards is fairly entertaining. But even those great trailers didn’t make me want to go out and buy any of the books. Exploding zombie brains, for example, look great on film (bring on the popcorn!), but that doesn’t mean the words on the page are going to be great. They might be, of course—I’m just saying that films and books are completely different mediums, and anyone who’s ever read a book and then been disappointed with the movie version knows all about the difficulty of translating the printed word to the screen. (Look at the difficulty of bringing The Great Gatsby to life. How can you ever take the deliciousness of Fitzgerald’s prose and do it justice as a dramatic production? It hasn’t been done right yet.) The screen version often falls short or misrepresents the book entirely—and honestly, I think that’s a danger of doing a trailer. I imagine a mediocre or poorly done trailer can actually depress sales, rather than encourage them. The trouble, of course, is that there is no way to measure the effect book trailers have on sales. If a marketing genius can provide proof that $2K invested in a trailer will lead to an extra $3K in royalties (or whatever), then I’m sure I’ll line up to make one myself. In the meantime, it’s tough to justify shelling out major bucks and time on an enterprise of dubious worth.

Well, I take that back. I think Harry Connolly is making one for the right reason: He thinks it will be cool, and since he’s got some people working for him who know what they’re doing, I’m willing to bet he’s right. Since I already know Harry’s writing is awesome, I don’t need to watch the trailer to be convinced to buy his book, but I’m going to watch it when it’s ready anyway. The world can always stand to get a little cooler.

Comparison is a stepping stone to dribbling, babbling, madness.

No one ever told me that I’d be neurotically compelled to compare my word counts to other authors. (I don’t think there’s a pill for it yet, but I have no doubt it’s in development and side effects include self-flagellation, runny nose, and glossolalia.) Before I got my deal, I didn’t give a damn if I wrote three words a day or three thousand. Now I feel unworthy if I don’t write a couple thousand a day to keep up with the fast kids, and since I don’t make it most days, there’s a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on. I’m fully conscious that it’s silly of me; if I average just 500 words a day, that’s two novels per year. I can do that without burning out, and I am doing it, and it’s fine. But still. I wasn’t expecting this sketchy little gremlin to land on my shoulder and whisper that I don’t have an awesome author beard like that one guy, or that I should have finished my epic already, etc. I’m aware that these are nice worries to have in comparison to worrying that I’ll never be published; I’m just warning everyone that getting published will not cure you of  your neuroses. You will always worry about something, so gird your mental loins.

Mental loins? Clearly I need to stop writing now. I promise the next installment will be loin-free.

*Since the calendar flipped, now I get to say I have three books coming out this year!