Abstract
The seemingly overnight emergence of a form of promotion known as ‘book trailers’ shortly after the turn of the millennium suggests a shift in the marketing and promotional strategies employed within the publishing industry. This article follows the historical development of the audio-visual form known as the ‘book trailer’ across its history with a view to understanding the form itself. This article uses third party mediation to identify ‘book trailers’ within the public domain, grounding this work within a broader media and literary history. As such, this article charts the use of the term ‘book trailer’ and its competing nomenclature through newspaper archives and contextualises this with antecedent practices, and integrating this with the current literature on the film trailer as part of a wider understanding of the promotional trailer as a cultural entity.
Highlights
For centuries the publishing industry has existed, arguably taking form with the invention of the printing press and the development of distribution systems that allowed a single text to be rapidly reproduced for profit
For the last hundred years or so, the publishing and bookselling industries have coincided with the film industry, and for a little over seventy-five years alongside broadcast television and the maturation of broadcast networks that have resulted in a culture of audio-visual promotion
This history acknowledges that the term ‘trailer’ is malleable in its application, and that which one company or commentator may call a ‘trailer’ may operate under any number of different labels. Considering how these forms of promotion came into being and are understood within popular discourse informs an understanding of the publishing industry as it adapts
Summary
For centuries the publishing industry has existed, arguably taking form with the invention of the printing press and the development of distribution systems that allowed a single text to be rapidly reproduced (and delivered to customers) for profit. For the last hundred years or so, the publishing and bookselling industries have coincided with the film industry (and the emergence of the film trailer), and for a little over seventy-five years alongside broadcast television and the maturation of broadcast networks that have resulted in a culture of audio-visual promotion It is only after the turn of the millennium, that short films for promotional purposes, known as book trailers, became a recognised phenomenon, albeit one often ridiculed in and by the press. This article builds a tentative history of the book trailer based on references in the press and focuses on the discourse surrounding these new forms of trailer in order to chart their emergence This history acknowledges that the term ‘trailer’ is malleable in its application, and that which one company or commentator may call a ‘trailer’ may operate under any number of different labels. Considering how these forms of promotion came into being and are understood within popular discourse informs an understanding of the publishing industry as it adapts
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