Publishers Try to Sell Words With Moving Pictures
Correction Appended
BOOK publishers are unlikely to concede that a picture is worth a thousand words. But many of them are hoping that some well-placed pictures can help sell their words.
Random House, Workman Publishing, Scholastic and other publishers are running the equivalent of movie trailers on the Internet, all aimed at drawing fresh audiences to their books. The videos are not confined to sites catering to avid readers; they are also appearing on sites as general as Yahoo and YouTube.
The idea has received a thumbs up from the Association of American Publishers. “People want to know what a book is about before they buy, and these videos are a great new way to tell them,’’ said Patricia S. Schroeder, the association’s president.
Perhaps more important, in an industry that is notorious for penny-pinching on marketing for all but the best-known authors, it is also a cheap way to tell people about books. Companies like Expanded Books offer to film and place book videos for as little as $4,000. The Book Standard, an online publishing information service that is owned by VNU (the Dutch company that also owns Kirkus Reviews, Billboard and Adweek) has devised a contest in which film students compete to come up with book videos.
The Web sites have been running the videos as content, not advertising, so the publishers do not have to pay for every click. And unlike ads, the videos often have an afterlife in searchable archives, long after they have left the main home page.
“It’s so affordable that publishers are trying it for all different kinds of books,’’ said Skye Van Raalte-Herzog, a producer at Expanded Books.
The video formats vary as widely as the books being pitched. For well-known authors, the videos can be as wordy as they are visual. Bantam Dell, a unit of Random House, recently ran a series in which Dean Koontz told funny stories about the writing and editing process. And Scholastic has a video in the works for “Mommy?,” a pop-up book illustrated by Maurice Sendak that is set to reach stores in October. The video will feature Mr. Sendak against a background of the book’s pop-ups, discussing how he came up with his ideas for the book.