The Associated Pest

If you can’t judge a book by its cover, should you judge it by its trailer?

New York-

A hot trend in the publishing world is creating “movie-like” trailers for new book releases. While using alternate mediums for promoting artforms is not a new development (think movie posters for film, or album covers for records), it seems this approach is pushing a few boundaries and providing a social commentary on the state of literacy in this country.

Is the only way we can appeal to an audience through video and film in the on-demand age? Are we that glued to the television and sites like YouTube that we don’t have time to peruse our local library or bookstore? It seems to me that these questions are being answered by the advertising strategists of the publishing houses today.

For me, and I would contend most others, the great thing about a book is that you build a picture of a character, or a place, or sounds, or things with your imagination and with the descriptions the author uses. What makes a book interesting, is that my mind’s picture of these things may be completely different from yours or the next person’s. It is a medium of imagination. A film or television episode relies more on giving you the information for the most part. Sure there are endings to a movie left up to the imagination, but the picture of film characters are cemented in your mind the same as mine.

The reason I appreciate literature is that it is a departure from film (my profession, by the way). I don’t want an idea of what a character or a place looks like shoved down my throat. Slowly building that image through page after page is rewarding to me as a reader. A trailer for a book ruins that mystique.

Character is Everything

“It was a good movie, but the book was so much better.” How many times have we heard this in our lives, and what makes this more often than not the case? A friend asked me once why I thought the Soprano’s was so popular, and what made the show a success? He trusted my viewpoint as a filmmaker who has been working in the industry for nearly 10 years now. I told him I believed it was character development. That show (sometimes to its critical detriment) often forsook plot for delving into the inner-most facets of its characters. Tony wasn’t just a gangster pistol whipping his way through Jersey… he was a troubled soul who poured his heart out to a psychiatrist. He was much more than that too, and that’s what made him a great character. We saw every detail of his personal relationships.

A movie cannot possibly attain the character depth a book or even a successful television series can. It is limited by its length. A book builds layer upon layer of description to artfully do this.

So why are publishers using this medium when it serves only to force feed the public one interpretation? It may end up leading to their demise. Show me a trailer, and I’ll just end up waiting for the movie. Hopefully they’ll use the same actors and sets.

Tell me what you think? Let’s start a discussion….

Last 5 posts by G-man

• Super Tuesday, 4 Not-So-Super Candidates and How Healthcare Might Have been Saved - February 1st, 2008
• A Pound of Flesh for a Pound of Chicken - December 4th, 2007
• Democrat Hopefulls Resound, "I support the Right to Privacy." I Say Cut the Shit! - November 18th, 2007
• Weakening Dollar, Inflation Cause and Effect and How to Hedge Yourself - November 11th, 2007
• World Bank to Loan $900 Million To Iran, And the Massive Toilet Problem - November 5th, 2007