Book Trailers? Um, Okay.

I'm a little late on this, but I've only this week heard of the "book trailer market," which is apparently the (sort of) new rage in book marketing. SHOMI, an imprint of Dorchester Publishing, announced on Monday that Stephen King will judge their book trailer contest. SHOMI describes itself as "a groundbreaking line of speculative fiction that combines the best elements of the fantasy, thriller, science fiction, cyberpunk, and romance genres" and, more succintly, as "the future of romance." Joining them to present the contest is Circle of Seven Productions, whose website announces that they coined the term "Book Trailer" in 2002. The contest asks participants to film a book trailer for any title in the SHOMI series of modern-day fantasy fiction. The winner not only will have the public approval of one Stephen King, but his/her film will be shown at a movie premiere in NYC and at a theater in his/her home market.

When I tried to do a little more research on book trailers, I found the internet teeming with them. Everywhere from BookTrailers.net to YouTube to HarperCollins. Are people actually watching these things? My god, where have I been? Maybe I was off actually reading something.