This is fascinating – finally, book trailers are getting some mainstream recognition by way of the New York Times Sunday Styles section. Yes, people in the book industry have known about videos for books for years. But if I mention the phrase “book trailer” to a civilian, I get the “huh?” look and have to say, “You know how movies have trailers to get people excited about seeing them? A book trailer is a video that gets people excited about reading a book.”

Oh!

But they still don’t get how they work. “Do you read your book and videotape it?” No. Not so much.

Anyway, I love that this is becoming more mainstream. I never even knew about the Mobys, the award for best and worst trailers. But send these people a message to add a children’s category! Below is the winner from this year. It’s very funny!

Next spring, when Little Chicken’s Big Day comes out, we will have a signing at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Ct. and the movie theater across the street will show our trailer for a month leading up to the signing. I’m approaching other stores with novel ways to highlight the video we’re making, too. We authors gotta keep on our toes!

But what the article said about how Hyperion got this video to go viral was most interesting…they just had employees send the video to 30 people. They ended up having to Now you know I’m going to ask S&S to have their employees do that!