Tuesday, June 18  Week 9  Assignment 2

It's pretty clear that Nina Metz is no big fan of book trailers, and, after viewing a few, even some that were supposed to be "the best" I agree with her.  They are not hard to find, but they are poorly made, embarrassing, silly, amateurish, mostly unwatchable, and ineffective.  In fact, some of them made me not want to read the book.  I can only imagine the time, effort, and money that goes into making some of these travesties.  The NYT article claimed that, for an author, appearing in your own book trailer is nothing short of humiliating.  I get that.  They are not trained actors.

As a reader's services tool, these book trailers would not be useful.  A librarian would have to spend time navigating the web for them, and the audience would have to exert time and patience to endure watching them.  Not much real information about the book is given, as most of the time is wasted in senseless production.  In this era of immediate gratification, no one is going to want to view a two-minute book ad, unless, of course, it was fabricated by Nancy Pearl or the folks who wrote all the Heat books from the ABC drama, Castle, an amazingly brilliant piece of crossover marketing.

Tuesday, June 18   Week 9    Assignment 3

I had no idea that there were that many online reader's services tools out there, or that Novelist offered up training tools with their read-alikes.  Stop You're Killing Me, an outrageously useful mystery site, will be one that I will continue to use with customers.  The training was thorough, mostly geared to adults and teens, though, but I was glad to see that nonfiction was included.  All in all, a good use of time spent.