The trouble with trailers

I haven't posted anything recently, due to the fact that I've been insanely preoccupied with everything from getting my tax info together (something I vow to keep up with all year, but abandon by June), to working with the kids in the riding academy, to stressing over the reception for my son's recital.

I've also been musing, ruminating, noodling over a problem. It's not just my own problem, it belongs to a lot of authors, I think.

What do we do with book trailers?

Let me begin by saying that I think books should embrace all media. As our electronic age opens more doors, books have a wonderful advantage. You can sit down with a physical thing and feel the paper as you turn the pages and smell the ink and the glue from the binding and get lost in the words. Or you can press a button on a slim device and conjure up a story that comes with hyperlinks to pictures of things you've never seen and maybe even music playing in the background, and you can still get lost in the words.

I keep thinking book trailers will find their niche in the advertising scheme of things. They're out there, I know. My friends make them for their books. I even have friends who make trailers for other people's books. James Patterson gets his trailers on network TV, usually during episodes of Castle.

Like he needs more readers.

There needs to be a place for trailers to go, apart from YouTube and the author's website, etc. Some ideas I've had:

- A Book Trailer Channel. Twenty-four hours a day, nothing but trailers.

- A feature on trailers on NPR or other sites or TV channels that feature book reviews.

- Access to trailers for bookstores, either brick-and-mortar or internet, so they can display them on monitors in a store or in the corner of their website banner.

Got any other ideas? Maybe we could put our heads together and come up with a plan.

In the meantime, here are my three, promoting my Peri Minneopa Mystery Series:

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