 What's shakin' Booktube? My name's Cam and welcome back to another video. That's cool. I'm good too. Thanks for asking. So, today I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a dive into the forgotten, archaic, and mystic art of book trailers. Book trailers are exactly what they sound like. They are trailers for books. They're basically movie trailers, but worse. A lot of people would tell you that book trailers are not necessary whatsoever. They would encourage you against it. They'll just say, don't do it. There's no point. It's not necessary. Sure. Sure. It's not necessary to have a book trailer for the releases of your book. I can agree with that. But much like running down the street, buck-nude, with your book firmly clenched between your butt cheeks, I don't think it could hurt. You can't catch me, but you can catch my new book at Barnes & Noble, near you. The truth is, I think with the right budget and with the right creative mind or creative team, you could release a book trailer that could generate some hype for a book. I think that's completely possible. Don't underestimate the power of some engaging visuals and a bangin' soundtrack. I mean, look at the last airbender. That's a great example. Had a fantastic trailer, put butts in the seats, but I mean, unfortunately, the movie itself turned out to be a gigantic, steaming pile of Amy Schumer's comedy. Who wants another stolen joke about my vagina? Personally for me, as a personal preference, I think a simple animation is the way to go, because the problem is, when you involve real actors in the book trailer, you run the very real risk of it looking more like a student art project, because you just don't have the budget to make it look properly cinematic. That's not an insult. Don't get me wrong, that's not me trying the clown on you or anything like that. That's just truth. The camera gear required to separate a film with real actors, even a book trailer from the more like fan-made looking stuff, is really, really expensive. It's completely understandable that would be out of most normal people's budgets. Because look, if I'm being real, I would love to see more book trailers. I would love if book trailers became more popular and normalized for most big book releases. I think that'd be pretty cool. That goes for both good and bad book trailers, because the good ones are good, and the bad ones are hilarious. Anyway, let's have a look at some book trailers. We'll give them a score, yeah? How about we'll rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, and we'll rate them out of 5 forests? Because there's always a forest. It's not a book trailer unless there's a forest. And I want to reiterate, I'm not here to dunk on anyone. I'm not here to be me or be a bully or anything like that. This is all in good fun. We're just pointing out some stuff that might be a little bit cringe, some stuff that might be good. A little bit of cringe every now and then is fine. God knows you'll find more than enough of it on my channel, directly here. Probably in this video. I'm starting to wonder if this video is gonna get content striked by some salty, like, book company or something. Ah, fuck it. Oh, by the way, really quickly, what do you think of the t-shirt? This was like one of the first designs I ever made in regards to shirts, and it's still one of my favourites on the store. If you want to grab one of these for yourself, or if you just want to have a look at some other reading and writing related clothing that doesn't look like complete poo poo, go over to pagenomad.com. Okay, so first up is the book trailer for Sight. It's a pretty popular book series. I haven't read them, but it's a book series. I would be interested in reading at some point, or maybe I should save that observation for after the book trailer. If we are to protect our perfect world, we scythes must live by a supreme set of rules. What? Thou shalt. All right, um, aside from the bwaaaang being way too loud, and I can't really hear what the fuck they're saying over the music, I mean, it's visually pleasing. I don't know how accurate it is to the story, but I mean, it looks like there was a bit of a budget behind it, sure. Still looks a little bit goofy when you add real people into it, though, just like the close-up shots of the people walking past. It just, I can't put my finger on what exactly it is, but it just carries with it. This just, it just feels fan-made. Like it doesn't look legit, you know? The top comment. Why Citro and Rowan look like they are 30? Oh, shit. Yikes. The trailer looks like a bunch of goons, but the book is extremely good. Damn, my guy. Well, hey, if you ever put a book trailer up, at least you know people are gonna be, they're gonna be fucking honest. You know what? I'm gonna give scyth three out of five forests for that book trailer. It wasn't horrible, just still a little bit goofy, and I guess the actors look too old. So next up is the book trailer for The School of Good and Evil. This one caught my eye. Just the thumbnail looks very aesthetically pleasing, so let's check it out. In the forest primeval, a school for good and evil. Two towers like twin heads. One for the good, one for the wicked. Try to escape, you'll always fail. The only way out is through fairy tales. You know what? That's pretty damn good. I'm not gonna lie, the animation is exceptional. It's like simple, but it's still interesting. Like most of it is 2D. I really like that. Again, I haven't read the book, but it looks like it really sets the mood or the theme of the story pretty damn well. It's very snappy, very good. As far as book trailers go, that's, I expect that's probably the best one we're gonna see today. So I'm gonna give it five out of five forests. Nice work. Okay, so the next one, oh boy. The next one is called The Gathering of Shadows and this is straight from a book utopia's channel. She's a booktuber. Oh, hey! There it is, a forest. Ring the forest bell, guys. We've got one. I fucking knew we wouldn't go through the whole video without seeing at least one forest. It was gonna happen. When betrayal has found a place in your heart, can you be forgiven again? Can you find redemption one last time? Okay, all right, stop. Again, not here to be mean, but yo. I'm sorry, but this straight up looks like one of those commercials that would play at 3 a.m. on TV to raise money for a church. It looks like a church thing. When the threat of hope is torn in two. It's not very good, is it? Despite the fact you had forests, that's gonna be one forest out of five. So the next one is called The Marked Girl. I'm intrigued on this one because it's supposedly as Jesse Christine and Cat, like, book explosion in it. And you know, I don't mind those guys. I'm not a big... I wouldn't say I'm like a fan of Christine's channel only because it's just too loud for me, man. I'm like, I'm basically a boomer, okay? I don't know how it happened. I don't know when it happened, but I'm essentially a boomer at this point. I can't handle being yelled at constantly. I just, I can't do it, but she seems lovely. I do like Cat. I'm pretty invested in seeing her story come out. Seems like she's putting a lot of work into writing her book. And Jesse, Jesse's my guy. Jesse's cool. I like Jesse. With that said, as much as I like these guys, if it's cringe, I'm gonna be honest about it. And I'm sure they would be fun without it anyway. Does any of this look familiar? You've probably seen it all before in the background of countless movies and TV shows. I mean, look at that and tell me you don't think of Baywatch. It's enough. Dude, when was this uploaded? 2016. Damn. Okay, this... This video... Fuck. This video already has me feeling like early 2000s as hell. Like for real. Is this the OC? Am I watching the OC right now? But I liked it that way. Of course, that was before I met people who came from an actual fantasy world. That's... Yikes. Okay. All right. Look, it obviously doesn't look like a legit book trailer, okay? I'll put it like this. If I was promoting a book, I wouldn't want that as my trailer. But it's genuinely funny and not just because it's super weird seeing Christine and Jesse make love eyes at each other. But it's funny. And you can tell the squad was having a lot of fun making that one. So, you know what? I'm gonna give it... I'll generously give it three forests out of five. That's as high as I can go, you know? Like Jesse, by some miracle, you're watching this. I hope you forgive me. I'm sorry. Okay, guys. So, let's go one more book trailer for today. This one is called A Clockwork Princess. My name is Tessa Gray. Let me tell you a story. There was a girl who loved a boy who was dying. She was torn by her love for another whose heart would die with him. I mean, visually, it's kind of okay. It's, I mean, special effects-wise, it's actually pretty good. But it also kind of has that mad 2008 Twilight fan video energy. You know what I mean? I'm definitely getting Team Edward versus Team Jacob vibes on that one. Gonna be two forests out of five. Oh, my God. The comments on this one. Oh, shit, dude. I love these books, but these trailers make me want to end my life. Holy shit. What is it with book trailers making the books seem way creepier than they actually are? Well, that's the question, isn't it? They have a point. Book trailers have a tendency to not reflect the best in the books themselves. Again, I feel like comes down to the creative team and the budget. They have more often than not the budget, I would say. It's just books are not like as profitable as most people would think. That's the issue here. Even the best books when being compared with, let's say with movies, because movies make trailers. That's the best comparison we can have here. Movies make just an astronomically larger amount of money than books do. They have a lot more money dedicated to PR and marketing and trailers. Books aren't quite as profitable. Even the, even a lot of the high selling ones, much smaller marketing budget. Add to that the fact book trailers just aren't, I think, people seek out actively. So I guess they wouldn't consider dedicating as much of a budget into that as well. It's just it's not a good recipe for a good trailer. But what was that one I liked? The School of Good and Evil. That was a good trailer. And I think ironically it probably had a lower budget than the last trailer we looked at just because they went with some simple but engaging mixture of 2D and 3D animation. Anyway, that's it for today folks. I hope you liked it. If you'd like me to review some more book trailers, I could make this a series. I'll be honest, depending entirely on how well this video does. Let's make book trailers popular again. And if you're going to make a book trailer, don't forget the forest, okay? If you do forget it, your books are trash and so are you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, God. I just became so enraged by the thought of a book trailer without any pine trees. It just... I'm sorry. Subscribe to the channel and I'll tell you where my very treasure is. It's spaghetti. The treasure is spaghetti. Thanks for watching. Catch ya.