A video trailer for a NOVEL? (Yep. Wanna see mine?)

Yes, you read correctly.  Check out the “mock-up” at www.youtube.com/smidbeach and tell me what you think!

So why do this when I haven’t even started looking for an agent, let alone a publisher? (1) Guerilla marketing to use as leverage when I query certain agents; (2) To build gradual interest among readers of the multiple blogs I write for (plus to update them); and (3) to get feedback ahead of time. The first one you see now is 4 minutes long…much longer than the final product. I’m working on a 60 second video right now.  But the interesting thing about this first version is that it’s comprised almost entirely of photos and still images…they just appear to be moving.   Creatively, it’s been an interesting project because I’ve struggled to boil my book down to a paragraph or a 30-second elevator speech. Even though I make a living doing this for other people, I am simply not my own best marketer. I remember in The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion said that though she had been a writer her entire life, she wished that for one time (her husband’s death) she wished that instead of recording her thoughts in word, she had a video editor on which she could show clips and “let you pick the takes”.