There are good trailers (we like this one), there are bad ones (too many to count) and we've never, ever, bought a book because of its trailer. Over on Absolute Write, various writers are debating the subject -- right here -- and the feeling seems to be, while the occasional trailer sells the occasional book, a bad book trailer actually kills any potential interest in a novel.
We decided we'd, maybe, like a book trailer but we didn't have an interest in making it ourselves. Price shopping, we discovered that the pros at CreateSpace will make a 30-second, text only, trailer for the low, low price of $1,199.00. We like CreateSpace, we have two of our novels available through CreateSpace, and we laughed like crazy when we saw how much they were charging for their product.
$1200 for a half-minute block of words? Really?
So we did what we often do when we think things are ridiculous. We got even more ridiculous-er. We went to fiverr.com and tried to find someone who would make us a 30-second trailer, text only, trailer for a tiny amount of cash. And we got lucky. Rey from Virtual Solution said he could provide the very thing for five bucks...with some pretty severe limitations.
We'd have to use an existing template, one that Rey has provided to other fiverr fans. The music, the images, these were pretty much all the same from one project to the next. While we'd be able to provide six lines of text, each line of text could be no longer than three words. So, if we hoped to be startlingly original, if we hoped to sell multiple copies of book from this trailer, we were pretty much out of luck.
On the other hand: $5. How could we not? Rey said the HD version (yep, he sent us two version for our fiver) would load faster if we slapped it on YouTube first so there you go.