Do Book Trailers Work?

Amusingly enough, this week's topic might again fall to Veronica, as the most experienced with the topic - Book Trailers: Yes or No?

I have exactly two book trailers - both that other people made for me. One my friend made as a gift, above, for ROGUE'S PAWN, the first in my Covenant of Thorns trilogy. And the other I paid a reader/fan to do, below, for THE MARK OF THE TALA, first in my Twelve Kingdoms series. I like them fine. They're fun. Do they work?

Meh. I dunno.

The idea is that they should work like a movie trailer, to generate excitement for the book. The problem is that movie trailers are, obviously, assembled from actual clips from the movie itself. For a book, the images must be created. Depending on budget, the images can be video or still. (Mine are the more cheapie option, of a series of still images, which I don't think is as effective. Even if you cough up for video, we all know that the movie is just NEVER as good as the book. That's with multi-million-dollar budgeting and doing the whole book.

All that said... can a short trailer capture the essence of a book? Probably not.

Can it get far enough to entice a reader? Maybe.

But, so far, my experience says it's not worth the money.



Oh! And my new contemporary erotic romance comes out tomorrow! 

Under Contract

Read an Excerpt

The kinkier the sex, the higher the price tag…
Ryan Black has admired Celestina Sala from afar for years, her lush body and sensual nature calling to the dominant in him. For just as many years, Celestina was off-limits—married, proud and self-sufficient. But all that has changed, and now Celestina is in debt and in need…and available. Ryan proposes a contract: he’ll pay off her debt if she gives herself to him in bed, yielding control in exchange for the pain and pleasure he’ll bring them both.
There are words for women who take money for sex, and none of them are nice ones. Celestina never thought she’d have to sink this low, but giving up control sounds more enticing than ever before. And suddenly it’s not about having to give in to Ryan. It’s about wanting to.
But when Ryan’s dark past comes to light, they may both be in over their heads. The terms of his contract say her body is his…but her heart may be another story.
One thing is for sure—now that Ryan has Celestina, he can never let her go.

Available July 13, 2015

• Kindle
• Barnes & Noble
• iBooks
• Kobo

 

How Writing 1st Person POV Gave Me Boy Cooties

Yesterday, at #LERANM, my local RWA chapter, I gave a tutorial on using Twitter. We had a great time and the lovely and viviacious Katie Lane snapped this pic as I was talking. And gesticulating. LOL!

This week's topic in the bordello concerns perspective - as in first, second or third person point of view (POV) - which works best for us and why.

I started out writing in first person, because my natural form from the beginning was personal essays. Very much like my blog posts. I sometimes segue into second person, I notice. Particularly in blog posts where I start saying things like you don't really notice how essays and blog posts tend to be in first person because you expect non-fiction to be more so than fiction. <-See what I did there?

So, when I went to write my first novel - which eventually and after many revisions and iterations became Rogue's Pawn - I wrote that in first person. In fact, and I admit this with chagrin, I originally wrote that book in a memoir style. As if I, myself, had fallen through a gate to Faerie and wrote a memoir about my adventures. I thought I was SO BRILLIANT doing that, subverting the genre tropes and all. Thing is, I didn't write genre well enough to subvert the tropes - something I had to learn through painful trial, error and ego-bruising. Thinking about it now, it IS kind of a cool idea. Something I might have the craft to pull off at this point.

Hmm...

Anyhoo. I wrote in first person because it was what I knew and I had some skill at it. Readers tell me they like my first person perspectives when they don't like others. It's not easy to do because it's so restrictive. The reader can only know what the first person POV characters now. You can mix in more than one first person POV character (I don't like it) or mix in a third-person POV in with the first (like that even less), but the purest form - and really my very favorite - is one person, telling the story through their eyes. It works well for me because I feel like I can really delve into the person's character, along with their emotional and spiritual arc.

I started writing third person with erotic romance. Most fiction is really in third person. With my full length erotic romance novels, the Falling Under trilogy, I added in the hero's third-person POV too. I alternate POVs in those and that's fun, too, to build the story from two perspectives like that. I keep a very close POV, so that it's barely a step removed from first person. So close, in fact, that in writing the third book in the trilogy, I inadvertently slipped into first person - writing from the hero's POV! I couldn't figure out why I felt so... odd. Then I realized, a page or two later, that I was inside a man's head. A very strange place to be.

This may have marked a step up in writing craft for me however. I might try it again, if I can make sure to wash off the boy cooties afterward. ;-)

For the fantasy series I'm working on now - brand new, top sekrit stuff! - I'm writing in third person alternating POV, because my agent, fabulous Connor, asked me to. He  and Iwanted to target a particular market and I like the idea of selling books as well as the next Word Whore. At first I struggled, however. I *really* wanted to write in first person, particularly the heroine. But I applied discipline (GASP) and found my way through to her voice. Now I'm into it.

So, that doesn't really answer the question, I know. I like having all the tools. Each story is different and so are the various markets.

It would be interesting to know if you all like how I write one kind of POV over another - feel free to share!