Today I am featured on the Kidlit blog the Class of 2009. For the past few years, YA & Middle Grade authors who have released a book in the same year have banded together to form a group to do joint promotions.
I produced a book trailer for one of the members of 2K9 and the group asked if I would do an interview for the class blog. http://community.livejournal.com/classof2k9
I
have been a member of the SCBWI for fifteen years. It is a wonderful
organization full of generous souls. I don’t remember who first told
me about Albert, but when one of our own experiences such a tragedy
word gets around and what I like to call the “Book Angels,” spring into
action.
One angel passionately wrote to me about Albert needing blog reviews to help with the promotion of his debut novel, Crash into Me! I
was happy to write a review. But I soon realized that the best way I
could help was to give Albert a tool in his promotional cyber arsenal,
a book trailer.
I loved Crash into Me! The book trailer had many challenges. How could I portray teen suicide, a road trip and a surprise ending, in less than a minute? More importantly could I make it enough of a tease for teens to buy the book after viewing the trailer? I knew an amazing song could do all of that and more. I belong to several professional royalty free music libraries and I probably listened to 150 songs before I found the one I felt was a perfect fit. It is gritty and hopeful…like the book. I built the trailer from there. My background is in art. To me a trailer is like a painting, with images, color and movement placed in deliberate order to invoke the emotion of the story.
The trailer for Crash Into Me is very professional - when did you start doing book trailers and how did you first get into them?
Two
years ago my husband, Al Coury, received a lifetime achievement award
from a heritage foundation in Washington D.C. Al had run record
companies for over thirty-five years and worked with everyone from the
Beatles to Guns and Roses. He was to supply a ten-minute video about
his amazing career. I wasn’t happy with the videos that a production
company had done for the organization, so I passed on using them. My
control freak self rose to the surface and I decided to go take classes
and learn to do it myself. I’m a fearless Renaissance type of women and
mastering a new art form was a mission. Luckily I’m a Mac person and
the apple store had all the classes I needed. Around that time book
trailers were just surfacing on Youtube. My author friends found video
production company fees way out of their budget. I knew that I could
provide a decent product for a reasonable price. Being a children’s
author I also had a unique perspective of how a book could be made into
a trailer.
You are a children's book author yourself. Tell us about your own books and about your blog as well.
My
first picture book, “Hanging Off Jefferson’s Nose, growing up on Mount
Rushmore” is scheduled for release on Dutton 2011. It is about the son
of the sculptor, Lincoln Borglum, who grew up on Mount Rushmore and
eventually finished the monument when his father passed away. My
agent, Mark McVeigh, is shopping a picture book on the building of the
Lincoln Memorial told by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln and I am working
on a middle grade novel about a parochial school girl growing up during
the Vietnam lottery.
My
blog, Tales from the Rushmore Kid, has changed my life in many
wonderful ways. In January of 2007, my local SCBWI put on a retreat on
promotion. Starting a blog was one of the workshops. Back in those
days there weren’t many kidlit blogs so I found a niche with a blog
that had a different look. Many Newbery Winners, National Book Award
winners and other authors gladly gave me interviews. I gained
readership, a professional platform and friendships. My reputation for
having a popular blog surged and that led to writing an article for the
just released Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market 2010 on Book
Promotion: From Blog Tours to Book Trailers.
If someone reading this were interested in doing a book trailer, what advice would you give them?
Every
children’s book author should invest in a professional book trailer,
even before the book is published. The more buzz about your book the
better. If you write the script yourself make sure it is only two or
three sentences. The trailer must use royalty free music; Youtube will
eventually pull sound off your trailer for unlicensed music. Do not
narrated unless the production house hires a professional voice over
artist. Often a trailer will look great but sounds like an amature
video. Some publishing houses will pay for trailers and some will
not. If you can only afford a trailer done by a friend make it short
and simple to compete with the professional trailers. Less is more
with book trailers. Show book cover, a few sentences, book cover and
isbn number with house and author info.
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