Carolee: The Making of a Book Trailer: Behind The Scenes

The writing of a book is a very private matter, but the publishing of a book is a group effort requiring the collaboration of agent, editor, cover designer, publicist, booksellers and a host of others.

The making of a book trailer can also be a very collaborative effort. I was extremely fortunate to have a talented young man create the trailer for my upcoming verse novel, FORGET ME NOT. Watch the book trailer HERE.

You can find talent in the most surprising places. I found Josh Stuyvesant (seated to my right in the photo above) at Monroe's restaurant where he was working as a waiter while studying film and media arts at the University of New Mexico. I was out with a large group of friends and Josh was our server. While I was busy talking, my husband was asking Josh about what he was studying in college.

One thing led to another and before I knew it, my husband was handing me Josh's phone number and telling me that Josh could make a book trailer for TAKE ME THERE, which had been released a few month's prior.

My husband figured that since Josh was such a good waiter he would naturally be able to produce a good book trailer. Ironically, that turned out to be true. I wrote the script, music, and song lyrics and Josh found musicians, actors, and film equipment. He put it all together on a shoestring budget and came up with a fabulous trailer. Check out the TAKE ME THERE book trailer HERE..

When it came time to create a book trailer for FORGET ME NOT (coming October 2, 2012), I naturally thought of Josh. This time I simply gave him the advanced reader copy. He created the script and storyboard, and then approached his friend Kyle Ruggles about creating the music. Kyle is the male vocal on the sound track for the TAKE ME THERE trailer. Josh then asked his friend, Jesus Ordóñez (who also worked on TMT) to handle photography and Jessica Garrett to take care of makeup.

Next he set out to find a girl who resembled Ally Cassell, the protagonist of the story. That's when he asked Haleigh Chwirka, a friend of his girlfriend, to play the part. Little did he know that Haleigh had gone to elementary school with my oldest daughter and that I had worked with Haleigh's mother at the same elementary school, she as an occupational therapist and me as a speech-language pathologist. It was wonderful catching up with Haleigh at the cast party at La Cumbre and finding out what a wonderful young woman she has turned out to be. Haleigh just finished a teaching degree and will be leaving soon to spend a year teaching English in Thailand.

The multi-talented Josh played the part of Elijah, the boy you see running down the street and holding the forget-me-not bracelet. Jeremy Kinter played the Hangman, the creepy guy in the hall, and also served as production assistant. He's actually a very nice guy in spite of his role in this video. When Josh and I got together for the final stages of production, we met at one of my favorite coffee shops, the Satellite, where Jeremy happens to work as a barista.

Nate Steinberg played Davis, the football stud. He also helped with set up. He is sort of semi-famous, having played an extra in "The Social Network." His father is David Steinberg, book reviewer for the Albuquerque Journal.

Speaking of forget-me-nots, Josh and I were both distraught to find out that they were out of season. We couldn't even find plastic ones at the local craft store. I went hunting for blue perennials and was lucky to find something similar at the Jackalope.

Like I said, it takes a real collaboration to create a book trailer!

These kids all did an amazing job, so if you like what you see, pass it on. Find the FORGET ME NOT book trailer HERE.

Michael: Promoting Middle Grade: Tough Calls and Stress Balls

Like most authors, I try hard to help promote and publicize my books. But after two YA novels, I've found myself at a bit of a loss when it comes to promoting my first middle grade novel. The approaches that worked in YA—social media, blog tours, etc.—aren’t much use when it comes to, say, 10-year-old boys. They’re not on Twitter, and the cops tell me I have to stop hanging around schoolyards.

Since it’s my first middle grade, I assumed it was just that I didn’t know what I was doing. Throughout me life, that has been a pretty safe assumption. So I asked around. I live in NYC, I know a lot of authors, SCBWI was in town . . . The result: If anyone knows, they ain’t sayin’. I heard a lot of “No idea,” “I wish I knew,” and “I was about to ask you!”

There were some long-term strategies thrown in: “Do more school visits,” “Go to conventions,” and “Hang around schoolyards.” But none of those are much help in the, let’s see, two days until Plunked officially comes out. Here’s a look at some of the extreme, questionable, and extremely questionable things I’ve tried in the mean time:

1) An animated book trailer (it will surprise no one when I say I made this myself).

Get Plunked!
by: MDNorthrop

2) Here’s Plunky! Say ‘ello to my little friend (the star of my latest blog post):


3) Two words: stress balls. (I'll just pause while we all come up with our own jokes here.... Moving on!) I am seriously considering getting a whole mess of these squeezable mini baseballs made up with the title of my book on the side. I doubt it’s cost-effective (they’re about a buck each), but they might help. And I could definitely use the stress relief.


4) And, as the final act of a desperate man, I even joined Goodreads. I was definitely hesitant—rumor has it the place is littered with the hollowed-out husks of formerly happy authors—but it was necessary in order to list the book for a giveaway. I heard someone tell this other person that they heard from a third person that it might be a good way to promote your book. The conditional tense remains in effect [Update: Or does it? Check out what Yat-Yee has to say in the comments...], but I'll say this for Goodreads: They hide their husks well. My giveaway is up and running, and I'm "14% done" with the new Howard Cosell biography.

5) Which is not to say I have no answers. I do have one reliable, time-tested way of dealing with launch week . . .



Well, maybe not time-tested so much as cask-aged, but still. Cheers, gentle reader. I will not ask you to buy my book—well, I won’t beg—but if you could raise a glass to its success (or untimely demise) this week, I’d appreciate it.