TRAILER TALK

With a book trailer, there’s the chance that people, other than those already looking out for your book will see the trailer and become curious about your book,” she explains, adding, “I don’t object to book trailers as a reader either. Since I’m going to be putting put down a good amount of money to buy the book, it’s helpful to get a good description of the book beforehand.”

Aman Arora, Deputy General Manager, Marketing of HarperCollins Publishers India, is of a similar opinion. “Book trailers, like other marketing tools, work brilliantly for a book’s promotion, if they are creative and well thought out,” he says, but adds that it’s important to ‘ plan the outreach of the video to ensure discoverability’ and warns that ‘ one shouldn’t expect that launching a video would lead to an instant spike in the book’s sales; it should be a part of larger publicity campaign’. But he does believe like with all creative things, there isn’t a single formula to create an interesting trailer. “There are no rules for creativity — one can bring in a new, disruptive idea and surprise the audience,” he says about book trailers. While abroad, authors regularly go the extra mile to create riveting trailers ( one instantly recalls Gary Shteyngart’s books’ trailers) or even self- aware ones that parody the phenomenon of book trailers, Chetan Bhagat seems to have set the ball rolling in India. Will it have a domino effect? Only time can tell.