Last week I came across a trailer on YouTube for Chuck Klosterman's latest novel "The Visible Man." I had only become aware that trailers for books even existed this past summer, when I caught one for Drew Magary's book "The Postmortal", but apparently it's become a key element to the way books are marketed nowadays. After some brief Internet research, I found out that this trend has been going on for quite sometime and that the first book trailer ever played publicly took place in 2003 for Christine Feehan's book "The Dark Symphony."
Obviously the YouTube/social networking days have served as a catalyst for this phenomena. It has undeniably changed the way that books are advertised, a change that I would assume has been for the better. However, there is a huge fundamental flaw in the execution of this new way of doing business that I can't help but address.
What is the ultimate goal that one hopes to attain by deciding to read a book? I would say knowledge comes first and foremost, but for arguments sake let's throw history books and bio's on the back burner and focus on fiction novels. Well the whole point of a novel is to be entertained and to create the world that you are reading about inside your own head. Your interpretation of the characters, setting, mood etc. is one hundred percent determined by the way your imagination processes the words your eyes are reading. That is the beauty of reading. And that is also why I have never* seen any of the Harry Potter movies.
I don't like mixing business with pleasure, and by that I mean I like to be the one calling the shots when it comes to what I'm supposed to be seeing inside my own head. Book trailers, specifically the one embedded at the top of this page, take part of the joy of that creative process away from you by showing you what the author intends each character to look and sounds like. This is the first time I've read a book after seeing a trailer for it beforehand and I'm not going to lie, whether I like it or not, I picture the characters from the video whenever I'm reading about them. There's just no way around it. The damage has been done.
Now this doesn't mean that I haven't enjoyed reading The Visible Man, because I can assure you that I have. But a big part of me feels somewhat cheated that I am missing out on some of the pleasure of artistic interpretation.
Lastly, another question I have with book trailers is what happens to the actors playing out these roles? It's not like they're making a film, they're just acting out a couple of scenes from a script. But if you're going to go through all that production trouble with casting, writing and shooting, why not just make a movie while you're at it? It feels like you're already half way there, no?
-fresh (@danye33)
*That statement isn't entirely true. I did see the 6th one in theaters and fell asleep midway through
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