Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to posit a methodology for exploring promotional trailers in the public domain and a critical discussion of the findings therein.
Design/methodology/approach
– The approach utilises third part press as a mechanism to limit videosharing website results and allows for a varied corpus of data.
Findings
– The paper posits that the term “trailer” has shifted significantly since its original use in the film industry and now applies to a certain type of experiential promotion.
Originality/value
– This is the first time a methodology has been discussed that considers trailers as a shared vernacular term, rather than subject of historical archive.
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.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.