Be More Bookish - Week 9

Week 9 - Assignment 2

Some things when paired together work wonderfully, for example a light bulb screws into a light socket gives us light. Other things when paired together fail fabulously, for example watching the eraser melt on the end of a pencil when stuck into said light socket (disclaimer: absolutely do not do this it may result in electrocution or fire, not that I would know from personal experience). Failing fabulously is what I think when thinking about book trailers. Prior to this I didn't know that they existed. And after watching them on Youtube now I just think they are terrible. Okay, I understand the notion behind the purpose for online book trailers. The overhead cost to produce a book trailer is probably astoundingly inexpensive to traditional advertising. The only thing a publisher has to pay for is the cost of the video production company to produce the trailer. After that there's not much to it. The infrastructure of the internet is there for free, you don't have to pay for airtime or ad space like in traditional TV or newspaper advertising. I think the crux of the book trailer media is that it just doesn't fit the branding of the experience of books. Look at the human expression in celebrating books encompassed in book readings, book signings, book clubs, e-readers, tablets, libraries, blogs, publisher conventions, fan conventions and so on. Each event characterizes or celebrates the intimate experience we have singularly with ourselves reading written words on a page. Books are instructions for a complex story that we transcribe to our brain's imagination that we interpret alone but can celebrate together once we partake in the content.

Book trailers circumvent all of that. They tell us visual/audio media without any insight to whether we will like the experience of reading the content. At best book trailers give one an ambiguous idea that a certain title will exist in the near future. And even so it's frivolous to try to do the literal preview of text scrolling text on a screen. It takes to much time to communicate the information necessary to decide if one wants to commit to the material. A real example of this that failed fantastically was when comic book publishers in early to mid 2000's where trying to decide on new media to increase story circulation. One idea that should never have been commercially available (and was ultimately ignored by comic fans) were animated comic book panels on DVD. These were literally DVD productions that showed comic book panels with slight animation within the panels and time sequenced speech bubbles. The video would last 20 to 30 minutes and was extremely boring. Many people where confused by the product's advertising thinking they were regular animated cartoons of their favorite comic book characters and sorely disappointed after their purchase. However the medium was ill suited for comic book fans from the beginning and wasn't an acceptable experience to the preferred method of looking at comic panels in print form or a digital book equivalent.

From the articles provided for this assignment, the idea of book trailers seems to be pushed heavily by publishing companies. While publishing companies do the best they can to make money off their products with book trailers. It should be remembered that they are scratching to find the best business practices that make sense for successful sales. And if marketing research shows that book trailers are not helping them to achieve sales, publishers will move onto the next thing that will. Till then I'll just stick to reading the book jackets.

Week 9 - Assignment 3

Be More Bookish has been insightful in it's purpose to provide passive training modules for new librarian staff. If I had anything critical feedback regarding the program it would be regarding access to the training blog. While staff are maintaining a public blog regarding the comprehension of the articles and assignments given. The content for the weekly assignments can only be accessed internally from computers at the branches to the library's servers. I would encourage training and assignments to be posted to a public account much like the ones that library staff are using to blog on.

Thanks for sharing the insight and resources that were dispensed during the 9 week courses. I have already begun sharing website links with branch patrons and other coworkers referenced from the Be More Bookish blog when appropriate.