This is a guest post from Chung Nguyen-Le, founder of MeeQi.com and the Sixty Minute Story.
Movie trailers and television pilots are powerful and effective marketing tools.
They create a foundation for the story and excite the audience about the upcoming release and most importantly, set the wheels in motion for people to talk, share and spread the word – the best kind of marketing.
So how can you market your book like a movie?
Learn from Lost
The two hour pilot episode of the TV series Lost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(TV_Series) was one of the most addictive pilot episodes ever shown on television.
After watching those first two hours, as viewers we felt compelled to continue watching. After all, although it was only two hours, those two hours were enough to:
- Introduce characters
- Set the foundations for the story
- Leave the viewer excited and wanting more
The pilot was a prelude to the successful production of a series of six seasons, winning a roster of awards, and most importantly – building a marketing engine – its fan base. A fan base talking about the show, spreading the word, sharing views and most importantly, buying into the show.
The Short Story: the pilot for your book
A short story can be the movie trailer or television pilot for your book.
Just like the movie trailer and television pilot, it’s an opportunity which you can use to:
- Introduce characters
- Set the foundations for the story
- Leave the reader excited and wanting more
An effective short story gives readers a story which they can easily manage and absorb, without feeling like they have committed, time or money, buying the book or spending hours reading.
However, through an effective short story, they find themselves drawn to your characters, and getting excited about where the story continues… enough for them to buy and consume your book in every sense of the word.
Is a short story enough?
The Sixty Minute Story highlights and reminds us just how realistic it is to establish characters and develop a full story in a form which is short enough to finish reading in just sixty short minutes. It also shows you in easy stages how you can get your short stories out to millions of readers.
The power of short movie trailers
To see how powerful movie trailers are, visit Apple Trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers) where you can find lots of new movie trailers – designed to get you excited and to buy your ticket.
Try it
This fan-made movie trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZaTFmEL-l0) has recently been doing the rounds on the internet.
After only committing a short three minutes and 50 seconds, I’ve experienced a taste of the full feature and I find myself excited and wanting to know more about the story behind this movie – certainly enough for me to happily pick up my wallet and pay to see the movie – or read the book.
Do it
Create a short story for your book and offer it for free.
Attract the reader’s interests by using the short story to reassure them that you only a few minutes or an hour of their time.
Then just like a movie trailer or television pilot – let readers taste the concept, draw them in with your characters, excite them with your writing style, and set the foundations and platform for your story… and then let the consumer know your full feature book is available to buy.
Chung Nguyen-Le is the founder of MeeQi.com and the Sixty Minute Story. He loves igniting inspiration, encouraging creativity and meeting and supporting people who are energetic, passionate and MAD (Making A Difference). You can get in touch with him via his site cnlifeasitis.com
Image Credit: Flickr CC PickSherbet
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Many movie trailers are compilations of various scenes and dialogue excerpts in a non-chronological order. Maybe that could be tested when trying to create interest for a book as well.
I can’t believe in all my years, I’ve never heard or thought of a short story as a pilot to the series in regard to a full length novel.
Simply elegant, and I can’t wait to try it. Awesome and thanks.
Thanks for the article. I’m wondering — why a short story rather than just the beginning of your novel (especially if you give an excerpt that ends with a question)
That is definitely an interesting concept. Movies are definitely popular, so why not market your book like a movie. It really does make sense.
I hope the article was useful and I’m glad it provides quite a new and different way to marketing your book.
I wanted to include a comment to respond in response to using a short story rather that a sample of a novel. I then realised that with all the references, links and examples I had, the comment no longer resembled a comment at all – but looked like it was a article of its own. Whoops.
I’m hoping to finish it off very soon and will get this online for you Livia
But here is an example from my own recent experience.
With the Sixty Minute Story, we are optimising and giving away for free – 365 short stories, each and every day in 2010.
The first one was The Story-Teller by Hector Hugh Munro, and it tells the story of some people on a train carriage. Being a short, I got the full experience of the full story – so I didn’t feel like I was ‘cheated’ (for want of a better word), like I would perhaps if I was only given a sample.
The interesting thing is… I was reading it on a 30 minute train journey and although it only took me 12 minutes to read. I found myself desperately wanting to know more about the protagonist. To the point where it felt the urge to write to the author and ask them to pen a series. It wwas exciting. I then realised, I was involved. I felt like I had a relationship with the author, the story and all the characters.
Sorry. I’m struggling to explain it lol
The best thing would be to perhaps give it a go.
Take just 15 minutes to yourself. Read the short story (http://www.meeqi.com/media/hector-hugh-munro-the-story-teller/) and see if the feeling at the end is different to that which you get with a sample from a larger novel. Its all free and there is an epub version for the iPhone too
It would be great to discuss your responses here on The Creative Penn.
Excellent idea; this concept worked pretty well for Tolkein so it should work for us lesser mortals.