Week 9: Book Trailers and Training Wrap Up

Book trailers have become very popular over the past few years and are often a signal of how committed the publisher is in marketing a title. They can vary greatly in how they approach the subject, e.g. author interview, collage, or short films. In addition, some enthusiastic fans make their own trailers.
Week 9: Assignment 1 Done


Week 9: Assignment 2Post to your blog your opinion about book trailers – do they succeed in marketing the books they are trying to promote? Are they useful for readers’ advisory?

Sometimes I believe they are good marketing tools that lure the viewer into wanting to know more about the story, but more often I think they are just seen as entertaining clips which often have no correlation to the story they are trying to sell.

In addition, they are time consuming to watch. The marketers are going to have to whittle the viewing time way down into about a 15 second spot.

As a reader's advisory tool, if there were enough time in a work day to alot the viewing time needed, then sure, it could be useful. But as is....no. Perhaps only as a suggested resource for patrons to look at.


Week 9 Assignment 3Summarize your thoughts about this program in a blog post. What have you learned that was helpful? 

First what I learned. I found the various genres and sub genres section great. I liked the narrative non-fiction section as well. While I enjoyed the various websites for books, it is very overwhelming. Oh, and if nothing else, I now have lots of Goodreads friends.

I enjoyed parts of the be more bookish workshop, however I think the planners underestimated the amount of time it would take to complete each assignment. In addition, some of the assignments were, in my opinion, unnecessary. If the objective was to open up new ways to to perform readers advisory, then it succeeded. I just think that really focusing of just a couple would have been far more useful and would have allowed the staff to really focus on retaining and using what they had learned rather than just viewing, blogging and checking off boxes.  After 4 weeks, my colleagues and I went from happily chatting about our blogs, to carping about it. That's not a good sign for a successful learning experience. It was too long.