Book Television for Readers: Are TV Viewers Turning to Online TV? Are Readers?
Online television is changing the landscape of how we view our entertainment. You can see homemade video, popular tv shows, music video, games and now the newest trend - books.
(PRWEB) May 12, 2007 -- The publishing industry has established itself in the entertainment world in a new and surprising way. Book videos have become such a popular promotional tool, by giving readers insight into a book and by entertaining them, that booksellers and publishing houses are now creating sites dedicated to showing them.
What are book videos?
Unlike older television commercials that would show the cover of a book and make an announcement that the book was available for purchase, these videos are designed to be more visually stimulating. Like music videos, or movie trailers, the videos capture the mood of the story while giving a synopsis set to pictures or footage.
Some are simple, using only the book cover, text and music and some are more complex, showing live action productions with actors and even special effects.
Online TV and books?
Online television is relatively new, with many content-specific online televisions stations such as E! Online for celebrity news, PBS Online for public supported content, Yahoo! TV, Beet.tv for tech news and now, Reader's Entertainment TV. There are literally hundreds of online television stations on any number of subjects and in any number of industries or countries.
On May 3, 2007 Reader's Entertainment Online TV went live after over a year of preparation. Not surprising is that the online TV site is the brainchild of the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, Sheila Clover English, who promoted the phrase "Book Trailer®" back in 2002, trademarked the term, and then began a 5-year campaign to make book videos an entertainment venue as well as an effective marketing and promotional tool for books, authors, and publishers.
What are readers watching?
According to Wayne Miller, distribution manager for Circle of Seven Productions, readers are more attracted to videos with live action in them. Booksellers, such as Borders Group Inc., have expressed an interest in the live action videos and are showing a variety of book video on their Borders Media site. But, Mr. Miller notes, many of the animated videos have become popular with younger readers. The book videos for Atlantis Rising and Fanged & Fabulous utilize animation and have been extremely well received online. Book video maker VidLit specializes in animated book videos and have seen some of their videos viewed by over a million people.
Author interviews are also popular with readers. Companies like ExpandedBooks and Bookstream have found ways to make a simple interview more engaging and entertaining. As more and more readers find book video online, the challenge then becomes to keep them interested, and get them to purchase the book.
The Catalyst
The internet explosion of social network sites, free uploads of user-generated video, and the public's enthrallment with virtual communities, virtual friends, and virtual entertainment is the greatest catalyst to the popularity of book video.
Many social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube that allow user-generated video uploads have paved the way for book video to reach out beyond the usual advertising medium, reaching tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of potential buyers. MySpace currently has 176,346,012 members and a special section called MySpace Books that has grown in popularity over the last few months. Author Alyson Noel, who writes young adult fiction that is fun and relevant, had her blog featured on MySpace Books. She included her book video in the blog, which generated a great deal of conversation, both on the blog and via email to the author. "In just three days of being featured on MySpace books, my blog got over16,000 views, my website received ten times the usual amount of hits, letters from interested readers greatly increased, and my pre-sales numbers on my upcoming release spiked."
YouTube, iFilm, Veoh, and many more social sites that encourage video uploads, have already found a ready audience for a multitude of videos. As the Long Tail theory teaches that one can be successful with using quantity as well as quality, one may draw the conclusion that the more free-upload sites there are, the more videos will be seen by the public. Whereas movie trailers, music video, comic trailers, and video game trailers have benefited from a visual medium that carries a variety of action based ads, books can now enter the arena with more than just a book cover.
Books on video, TV, in movie theaters, and now online television
An evolution is taking place in the publishing industry. Print ads may always be popular with literary promoters, but many publishers are stepping out on the edge and taking chances with a visual medium.
Companies such as Circle of Seven Productions, who have been leading the field of book video since 2002, continue to evolve as well. Reader's Entertainment TV offers everything from Book Trailers® to author interviews and from documentaries to original comedy shows, making available anything a reader, or a potential new reader, might find entertaining and engaging. With specialized "Genre Stations," that allow readers to choose what genre they would like to watch, books, and the variety of ways they can be promoted, will continue to evolve over the years to come.
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