Can A Book Trailer Make You Want To Read A Book?

We’ve all seen them: a dramatic voice, a few moody images, music building in the background. And somewhere at the end, a book cover appears.

But can a book trailer actually make you want to read the book?

I think it can, providing it gets the important bits right.

A good trailer shouldn't tell you the whole story, that's what the book is for. Instead, it should give you a taste of the world you're about to enter. It should create a question in your mind, make you curious, and leave you thinking: okay... what happens next?

For a thriller, that might be a glimpse of something terrifying. For a romance, it could be a sweet moment between two people. Fantasy, perhaps the experience of a world that doesn't exist anywhere except inside the author's imagination.

The trick is not to give too much away. After all, if I can watch your trailer and know exactly how the story ends, why would I bother reading the book?

For me, the best book trailers don't feel like advertisements. They feel like tiny doors into a story (I'm thinking about the actual doors here, as seen in the movie Monsters Inc!). If a trailer makes you want to open that door, I think it's done its job.