Book Trailers
A recent discussion on the CWILL (Children's Writers and Illustrators) listserv has sparked my creative fires. The topic is book trailers, the latest means of promoting books. Like movie trailers, they use images, sound effects, language, and music to catch viewers' attention and, hopefully, inspire them to buy the book. Writers post these trailers on their websites, YouTube, and anywhere else on the Internet they can find.
One of the books I have coming out in 2009 is a YA mystery. I think it would lend itself perfectly to this promotional technique. I already have some ideas for images and sounds, and I'm thinking this might be a good time to start experimenting with the Garage Band application on my computer to create a piece of music that is appropriately suspenseful. I don't really know what software programs to use to put something like this together, but I'm betting my computer/multi-media guru son will have lots of ideas.
I probably have a good eight or nine months to work on this, so I don't feel too pushed. Besides, the book is still in the revisions phase, and I probably should get it into publishable form before I try promoting it.