:: Shekhar Bhatia

Paperback trailers

Shekhar Bhatia

May .01 : I have not read Haunting Bombay, a novel by Shilpa Agarwal. I stumbled upon it when I was looking for reviews of new books by South Asian authors for my blog.

It’s a new novel and the few reviews on Amazon are mostly quite favourable. The author was born in Mumbai, educated in the US, taught at both UCLA and UCSB, and lives in Los Angeles. Her website says the book is set in India in the 1960s, and is the story of a girl who accidentally unleashes the ghost of a girl child who had drowned near her bungalow at Malabar Hill, Bombay. "As the monsoons erupt over Bombay, the ghost plunges the bungalow into chaos and Pinky must find the courage to uncover the drowning’s mysterious truth".

Towards the end of the blurb there was a link: "Watch the trailer". Purely out of curiosity I clicked on it, and I must confess I wasn’t prepared for what I saw on my screen: thunder and lightning, haunting sitar music, flickering candles and swirling smoke. "One girl must find the courage to face the family’s darkest secrets", says a voice. A door opens, something breaks, and more candles go off. It was like watching the trailer of a B-grade horror movie.

I do buy books from online stores, but I am afraid I had never seen a book trailer till I stumbled upon Haunting Bombay. I cannot compare it with the book because I have not read it, but it did whet my appetite for more trailers.

Book trailers have been around for five or six years. The first trailer was made in 2002 when an aspiring writer Sheila Clover was looking for some way to get her books noticed. She even trademarked the term "Book Trailer", and set up a company to make trailers for others. There are sites where authors can submit their trailers.

They are not book reviews but, like movie trailers, a commercial for the book — either made by the publisher or funded by the author. These are usually two-minute clips (perhaps because of the short attention span of impatient net surfers), aimed at those who prefer to get their information from the Internet rather than a newspaper. A good book trailer has a script, a director, actors and a soundtrack. It builds suspense, and gives a reader a feel of the book. Going by the number of trailers posted on the net, they must be catching up as a promotion tool.

Let me give you an example of some that I watched. Shining City is a novel written by author-playwright-screenwriter, Seth Greenland. I found a reference to the video on NPR’s (the US National Public Radio) popular programme All Things Considered. The trailer starts with the author introducing himself: "My name is Seth Greenland, and I’ve written a new novel called Shining City. It’s set in Los Angeles, so naturally it begins in a hot tub with a pimp and three hookers".

In the next shot he is sitting in a tub with three voluptuous women. It works, because you want to know what happens next.

Take the more recent trailer of a book called Skin and Bones by the British crime writer Tom Bale. I haven’t heard of him but I really liked the elegantly done trailer in black and white that starts with the line "On a cold winter morning a sleepy village awakens to a nightmare… a lone gunman goes on the rampage… but someone survived". It kept me riveted till the end. I wouldn’t mind watching a movie based on this book. But I’m afraid I wouldn’t buy the book based on this trailer.

It’s an emerging art form — like music videos in the early ’90s. We’re not far from the day when, along with the Booker, they will also have a prestigious prize for the best book trailer. I saw a beautiful trailer of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, made many years after his death by a group of students as a school project. It’s a creative exercise (you don’t need a trailer to sell a Roald Dahl book), which is where, I suspect, book trailers may be headed.

Alfonso Cuaron, who directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men, made the trailer of Naomi Klein’s 2007 bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. At seven minutes, it’s three times the length of an average book trailer, but it’s brilliantly done. It got me interested in the book.

But a lot of trailers are so terrible that they look as if someone is making a PowerPoint presentation to the tune of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra. You can see they are "self-made". It’s not difficult to make one. If your publisher does not promote your book, all you need is a laptop with some basic movie-making software, a camcorder and a couple of willing friends who will act the scene for you. If you don’t want actors just use images. Add some music, put it up on YouTube, and you are done. You have your two-minute claim to fame.

But will it sell the book? Perhaps in the future. It’s obvious there’s an audience for them, but it’s not me. I don’t mind watching a movie based on the trailer but I doubt if I will buy a book after watching its trailer.

I would rather read a review in print, or go by the recommendation of a friend whose opinion I value. Perhaps I am stuck in the print age.

Shekhar Bhatia can be contacted at shekhar.bhatia@gmail.com