 These were, uh, these, these were a thing, yeah. I'm sure a lot of you are shocked to hear that, but book trailers used to be semi-prominent, you know? Like they're, they're just like trailers for movies or video games or something, except therefore a medium that is not visual or audio in nature. A lot of you are probably shocked to hear that. I mean, I had a friend that I talked to about this just a few days ago who genuinely didn't know books had trailers, and like they still do. They're just not nearly as prominent as they used to be, because I mean, around 10 years ago or more than 10 years ago now, that was when they first started and also when they were most popular. The first time I saw one of these was actually on television. It was a commercial for Fang, which is one of the books in the Maximum Ride series, and it's kind of horrible. It really is the distillation of what edgy teenagers thought was cool around that time. You know, like the visuals, the music, the way that the characters were just kind of swooping around and flying but not really saying anything or doing much. Like it's clearly like just, yeah, this is the audience they're going for and they want to show them how cool it is. And I remember being shocked because I was like, wow, I didn't know that was a thing. And I actually had a friend with me that watched it. And I do want to say that it's a bad trailer because it doesn't really tell you anything about what the story is about. Like the friend I watched it with said, so like, are they fallen angels or something? Like, because it doesn't say anything. It just shows these two people with wings flying around. Also, I should note that, yes, I'm going to be playing like clips from these trailers, but I can't play the entire thing partially because, you know, that would ruin the pacing of this video. But also because of copyright reasons, like both the visuals and the music are often copyrighted. And the music in particular, I may have to just mute certain sections. So if the sound suddenly goes out, that's probably not your speaker or your headphones. That's just me having to mute stuff so I can actually publish this video. And a lot of other books started getting trailers around this time, particularly young adult books. Like, we'll get into a little bit more detail about that later. But particularly YA stuff just, I don't know why, but it just exploded onto the scene, and there were a bunch of them. And really, this rabbit hole is deep. I mean, if you look at certain channels or certain parts of YouTube, you can find like hundreds of these things going back, I mean, 10, 13, 15 years, like they go back a while. And again, they continue up until the present day. Like one channel I found that has a lot of these is Epic Reads. And the most recent trailer they uploaded was about two weeks ago. So like, there's a lot of these things around. Now these trailers vary wildly in terms of like quality, in terms of production value, in terms of like just the styles they use. Just they're all over the place. Like, a good example is one for a book called Don't Touch, which I haven't read. And I mean, just look at it. Congratulations, all the senior girls are gonna hate you. Yeah, that whole thing looks like it was filmed in someone's backyard. Like it had no budget whatsoever. But at the same time, it is realistic fiction, you know, you don't necessarily need a giant budget. However, it still looks pretty amateurish. And it seems like whoever made it just wasn't particularly good at what they were doing. That said, I can't say it's a terrible trailer. In fact, I'd say it's decent because it does actually say what the story is about and give you an idea of the general tone and general themes and all again, what it's about. And while I'm not interested in that sort of story, I think if someone was, then they would see that trailer and go, oh, maybe I'll pick that up. It's structured basically like a film trailer, you know, like they show you some of the best and most exciting or most emotionally resonant parts from the film and just cut them up. And then they say, huh, put these in front of their eyes and that will intrigue them. It'll make them want more. A lot of book trailers weren't like that, though. You know, like with that, they literally just went out and filmed some actors saying lines and stuff again, like it was a film trailer. But some of them would literally just use like stock footage and then some voiceovers, like for example, detrailer for partials. Welcome to Paragen, the industry leader in organic cosmetic and medical genetic therapy. In compliance with Paragen standards of practice for all biosynth units, partials are age fixed and unable to reproduce. Biosynth technology is the closest we've come to realizing the human dream. Constantly becoming better than what we are. And now we turn our attention to... Now, I can't say that this trailer looks particularly bad or amateurish or low-budget or anything like that. In fact, it looks professionally made. And it does do a good job of introducing the concept of partials as, you know, artificial humans. Like if you've read the books, which I have, then you'd know what those are. However, it's still a bad trailer because, again, it says nothing about the plot or what the book's actually about. It just introduces this one concept from the book. And it does glitch out a few points, which implies something is going on, but there's not enough detail to really put together that, oh, this is after the apocalypse. Now, if you look through a lot of these trailers, you'll notice that a lot of them came out from around 2010 to 2013. And then after 2013, they just became less and less prominent until we get to where we are today, where they occasionally pop up. But there's just, there's not that many of them. And that's an interesting time period to note because before that, the selection of books for kids and teens was kind of limited. Like, I don't know if younger people in my audience really understand, but people who are my age and older, I think you remember that back when we were younger, there weren't that many different book series that we could read as kids. Like, there were a couple of really big ones like Goosebumps and Percy Jackson and stuff. And if you were a big reader, then you read pretty much all of those. And there were a couple of like really, really small ones scattered throughout, but none of them had like big fandoms or anything. There wasn't that much to them. That was a small part of the market. Now, the boom in Young at All Publishing, which came out with Twilight and then The Hunger Games and then a couple of other big successes, that really just oversaturated the market because I mean, again, with Twilight, you had paranormal romance stuff that they just were throwing hundreds, literally hundreds of these series out there. And I mean, some of them did well, some of them did poorly, but they were just throwing all of them out there. Now there was something for everyone, whatever niche you wanted as long as it was in this particular genre, which didn't have a whole lot of niches in it. But as long whatever niche you wanted, you could find something to fit it. In fact, you could probably find several somethings to fit it. And I mean, there were still, again, a few big successes, but there were a lot more small ones and a lot more moderately successful books than there used to be. Now, if there's anyone watching this who has worked in marketing or who has studied marketing on any real level, you probably know that it's really, really hard to advertise stuff via the internet. I mean, it really is just too unpredictable. You know, it's too big, it's too fast moving, trends will come to life and then die before you even realize what's going on. There's, you never know exactly where people are going to be looking and what they're going to be looking at. Like, it's unpredictable. And so it's very, very hard to advertise on the internet in any way, shape, or form, even with stuff that we have today where they actually track, you know, your internet history and everything in order to advertise you stuff that they think you'll want. Even with that, it's still very, very difficult to do. And I don't know if that kind of technology was even around 12 years ago. So they were trying something different. And it makes sense, you know, trailers are like visually engaging, visually appealing. And they don't typically go with books, but they can still get your attention and get you interested in the story and everything. And even before trailers, they were trying this stuff for a long time. Like, if you look at the Harper Teen channel, which again has a lot of these trailers on it, that goes back like 16 years. And granted, they haven't uploaded anything in six years, which is kind of unfortunate. I wish they're putting out more. But yeah, their first video was from 2006. And that one was not a trailer. That one was just an interview with an author. And they had other stuff like that, like, Oh, okay, here's some clips from like book release. Here's, excuse me, again, there's an interview with authors like just they were trying new stuff to try and get people into this market because they realized like, you know, kids and teens will buy books if they have the options. So like this new market opened up, and they're just trying to figure out how they can get a piece of that. And they thought that having engaging trailers would be an interesting way to do it. And it's easy to see why they would think that I mean, which is more interesting to you. Like if someone just kind of explained in, or rather, if there was like a paragraph of text given a summary about how this is a story about how Nephilim saved the world from evil, or this, my name is Anna. And I used to be a good girl. You see, I'm the daughter of a guardian angel and a fallen one. If only I hadn't met Kaiden, he's the kind of boy your daddy warned you about. But no one warned me. That was the trailer for sweet evil, which, oh God, it's a horrible trailer, but it's not inaccurate. You know, it's a cheesy paranormal romance, and the trailer tells you it's going to be. My favorite part of it, though, is not the two actors staring sexily at one another and giving weird facial expressions. My favorite is the part where the text just says, give in to sexy. Because that sounds like something Tommy Wiseau would say. But again, it's bad, it's not inaccurate. So if you're looking for that type of story, that would probably intrigue you a little bit. And the trailer for the selection is kind of similar. Now, I should note that books that have supernatural or sci-fi or fantasy elements of any sort, their trailers tended to be worse. Like you may have noticed in the sweet evil trailer, even though that is a story about angels and demons and shit, they didn't show much magic or anything in there. And that's because, well, frankly, these trailers did not have much budget behind them and they did not have much skill behind them. Something to keep in mind is that publishers have pretty small marketing budgets. You know, like, especially, you know, before all this, they had even smaller ones. It was just kind of a, yep, put them out there and the people who want to read this type of book will probably find it and it'll spread via word of mouth. And also keep in mind that creating a trailer for a book is different than doing it for, say, a movie. Because for a movie, you probably already have the whole thing filmed, or at least part of it filmed. So you just take that pre-existing footage and voice work and everything and just cut it together in such a way that it becomes kind of exciting and intriguing and only two minutes long. And then you put it in front of your audience's eyeballs and then, hopefully, they will come and see it. But with books, you obviously don't have that, so you kind of need to start from scratch and, you know, you need to find actors, you need to find places to film, you need to get, like, camera equipment and everything. And again, movie studios tend to have all of that on hand. And if they don't have it on hands, then they know exactly where to get it. And they tend to have, like, much bigger marketing budgets that they can get it. Whereas publishers, like, again, they just kind of get whatever's left over or whatever they can find. And so you not only have low-budget trailers, but they're trailers that are made by people who, I mean, I'm sure many of them are good people, but they just don't know what they're doing. And it's much more obvious that you don't know what you're doing when you try to throw in, like, fantasy and sci-fi elements, and it's clear that, okay, the effects are really cheap and the acting's not that good and all that sort of thing. Like, for example, look at the trailer for Under the Never Sky. Yeah, that is a big oof is what that is. Like, could you even tell that the world was supposed to be post-apocalyptic in that trailer? Like, I could literally grab a camera and walk, like, 15 minutes from my house and find a similar location to shoot at than that. And it still wouldn't look post-apocalyptic. Like, oh my god, it was not good. Like, there's a reason that location scouting is a thing. This looks like it was just filmed in someone's backyard. There is also a trailer for a book called Struck, which I recently read, and I think next week's video is gonna be on that because the book is kind of incredible in some ways. But yeah, it's a similar situation. Like, it's a story that has a lot of, like, weird supernatural sci-fi elements. Like, I don't even know how to describe it. It's about a girl that's addicted to being struck by lightning, basically. And then there's characters that read minds and shit. It's wild. But the trailer for that is also really low budget, but it at least has some personality to it. When you've been struck by lightning as many times as I have, you start to expect the worst all the time. But I never saw this coming. When you opened the sixth seal, there was a great earthquake. Three days from now, God's storm will arrive. The final battle is coming. We need you, Mia. I tried to run. But sooner or later, you have to face who you are. What you've done, the world is in my hands. I just want to say I really love that trailer. Like, I love everything about it. I love the hokey acting. I love the weird costumes they have. I love that one brief shot of them in like a night club. I love the villain that you can see with like the white hair and the cataracts in his eyes and everything. Like, he looks so silly. He looks like the villain from an 80s action movie. It's just, it's amazing. And the thing is, that trailer, it makes the book look dumb and it makes it look bad. It does not make it look boring. And even though you can tell the effects are kind of cheap and cheesy, they achieve what they're trying to do. Of course, in that case, it probably helps that the author and her at the time husband actually worked in Hollywood. And so, they at least knew the basics of this sort of thing. You know, like they knew the basics of how to frame a shot, how to structure a trailer, how to direct actors, how to put a set together. You know, that sort of thing, which a lot of the other people making these probably didn't know. And a lot of times, in order to sort of disguise that fact, they won't even, you know, film it. They'll just have some animation or something with a voiceover. Like for example, the trailer for Everless. Now, I'll say right now, I kind of like the animation here. Like it's not the highest quality, I don't think. But I don't know, it looks kind of neat. It's at least a little different, a little eye catching. And the voiceover at first is not terrible, but it should have only been like 20 seconds. You know, it should have just been the very premise of the story, which is like, yeah, rich people literally bleed life from us so that they can live forever. And then just left out the rest because the rest makes it seem like much more generic and everything. But I mean, that's just my opinion. Another good example of this, which I mean, I guess it's still my opinion that this one's bad, but I think a lot more people are going to agree with that opinion. The trailer for Deep Blue. I love that trailer so much. It's so bad. Like the animation is horrible, and it just goes on forever. And it tells you nothing about what the story is about at all. And I know nothing about any of these characters or the world it's in. Like, I know that they're mermaids and there's some sort of magical fire which somehow works underwater. But I know nothing else about them. Like, it looks like a cut scene from a really crappy JRPG that you would find on the PlayStation 2. Like, a crappy one. Not one of the better ones. You know, not your final fantasies or your shadow hearts or anything like that. Like, one of the really shit ones that no one even remembers anymore. Yeah, it looks like a cut scene from one of those. It's impressively bad, but I had the biggest smile on my face the whole time I watched it. Now, you may wonder why so few adult books got trailers, if so many YA ones did. Because adult books, there's a couple of them. Like, there's a couple of trailers for them, but not that many. Like, I think the only ones I've ever seen have just been ones for Dan Brown books, which are pretty much guaranteed to sell anyways and probably have a much bigger marketing budget. And I think the reason for that is that the adult book market was kind of oversaturated already. Like, you know, like I said, the kid and teen ones was really small for a while and then it just expanded. Whereas the adult one was already pretty oversaturated. You know, there were a lot of different genres, a lot of different niches. You could find pretty much anything you wanted if you really looked for it. And granted that was more difficult before the internet, but you could still do it. It wasn't impossible. And the trailers really died down because, well, I mean, like I said earlier, advertising on the internet is really, really difficult. You know, you just you have stuff like algorithms, which are just impenetrable. They just are. It's my god, I'm sorry. I'm like losing my mind for a second because I just, I hate algorithms so much because they basically make it so that unless you know exactly how it works and you specifically play to it, then your stuff is not likely to be seen by that many people. And so it basically rewards momentum, I suppose is one way to say it. Like if you already have like again here on YouTube, like if you have a channel that's already pretty big, then that momentum keeps you going and keeps more and more people from that more and more people seeing you. And it kind of works the same way with everything else, like the bigger accounts on, say, Twitter and Facebook, those monopolize a lot of the attention. And so advertising in that environment is really, really difficult. And so it was a lot of effort and a lot of money sunk into these things for not that much reward. So publishers have kind of pulled back and are again just focusing on a couple of really big releases and not putting that much attention in their smaller ones. They will still occasionally release trailers and stuff for really big books that they expect to do well because it fits into some sort of niche, like whatever target audience they're going for, whatever focus group told them would work, it fits into that and they think you'll sell a lot. And these are the ones you usually see on the big stand at the front of Barnes and Noble. Oftentimes they pay Barnes and Noble specifically to put that there. So that's part of its marketing budget. And they do have some smaller successes and some books that are more, they sell moderately well, but they're not huge. But overall, the industry is just propped up by a couple of giant successes. On that depressing note, I do want to just take a moment to mention that fan made trailers are a thing. Fan made trailers for books exist. They're rarely good. They're pretty much always really bad. Again, they're just like the front cover of the book, and maybe some stock images if they can find them. And there'll be some music and some text that gets put over it. So it's not good. But they usually at least tell you what the story's about. And they are earnest. You can tell that it's coming from someone who does genuinely really, really enjoy the thing they're talking about. So I don't know, I just felt I needed to bring that up before I finished this. And yeah, that was just a look at a weird phenomenon that most people don't seem to know that much about. Yeah, just book trailers used to be a really big thing. Most people don't even remember that they were a really big thing. And they continue to be a small thing. And I hope some of you will go through and view some of these trailers and just get lost down the rabbit hole because these things are genuinely amazing. Not always in a good way, but they're amazing. Goodbye. Oh my goodness, people are still watching this. I'm not sure why I thought most people clicked away before the credits started. But yeah, these are all my Patreon people. 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