Alex Karpovsky from 'Girls' makes book trailer appearance

Book trailers are still having a hard time finding their way into the culture. There isn't yet a standard way to see them -- they don't play to captive audiences before movies start, or appear regularly with television or online advertising.

Usually, a book trailer is created and then left on its own, for overworked marketing departments or individual authors to try to push out onto the Internet, with a faint hope that it might go viral.

Could casting real actors be one way to jump-start the process and bring new eyes to book trailers? Greywolf Press is trying that tactic: Alex Karpovsky stars in the a trailer for the book "Four New Messages" by Joshua Cohen (Caveat: There is drug use and strong language in the trailer). Karpovsky is one of the young stars of the hit HBO series "Girls," in which he plays Ray, a friend of Lena Dunham's main character, Hannah.

Seems like using an actor from "Girls" might well reach a desired demographic -- young, hip cultural consumers -- more than simply using catalog-model types and overheated voiceovers. That's what can be found in some book trailers produced in Hollywood, where one company spends about $50,000 a pop to make book trailers for major publishing houses like St. Martin's and Random House.

Greywolf, an independent based in Minnesota, seems to be coming at things from a different direction, more Sundance than blockbuster. The book trailer above is called "Emission," and it's described as a short film based on a section of "Four New Messages" by Cohen.

In the trailer, Karpovsky plays a drug dealer whose actions are told by a girl at a laptop, smoking. We hear her voiceover reading what she types, and the secondhandness of the storytelling creates an uneasy sense that the narrator is not to be trusted. Or maybe that's the mood of the trailer, with music mixed with talk radio rants, and dark backgrounds filling with smoke.

Joshua Cohen is the author of the 800-plus page novel "Witz," published by Dalkey Archive Press. "Four New Messages" will be his first book since it landed, with a thump, in 2010.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Alex Karpovsky in a screenshot from the trailer for the book "Four New Messages" by Joshua Cohen.

A book trailer worth watching: Ben Marcus' 'Flame Alphabet' [video]

To kick off the publication of Ben Marcus' "The Flame Alphabet" this month, Knopf has posted a video for it that's worth watching.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether it's good. But since it's a book trailer that's trying to do something more interesting that simply be an advertisement, I consider it three minutes well spent.

Created by artist Erin Cosgrove, the animation uses text from the book in voiceover and illustrates, in action, some of what happens in the book. Partway through it uses a news broadcast to explain the novel's premise, which is one of my least favorite narrative devices. In this case, however, it's forgivable because the setup is pretty odd: In "The Flame Alphabet," children's language has become toxic to adults.

Even with the explanation, the trailer is a bit puzzling. It left me confused enough to go elsewhere to learn more about Marcus' book.

Maybe that's the task of a book trailer -- to fill the viewer with curiosity about the book. Although I'm not sure whether confusion and curiosity are quite the same thing.

Marcus will be in Los Angeles in February, at the Hammer on Feb. 1 and Skylight Books on Feb. 2. Maybe things will become clear then.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

How to make a book trailer for $50,000

Oh, the book trailer. What's it for, really? Who watches it, exactly? Can it sell a book? Does it matter if book trailers are going Hollywood? Our On Location column visits book trailer producer the Other House, owned by Chris Roth and three partners, on set to see the lay of the movies-meet-publishing land.

The company already has produced more than 50 spots for publishing giants Random House and St. Martin's Press, most of them shot locally, Roth said. The 15-to-30-second spots air on cable channels such as Sci-Fi and MTV, Internet outlets including Google TV and Hulu, online gaming sites and at movie theaters.

"We're doing four or five of these a month, and there are no signs of this letting up," said Roth. "The budgets just keep growing."...

Roth's book trailers cost as much as $50,000 each, and involve a full complement of actors, computer-generated effects, costumes and set designs with the high production values of a movie trailer. The book trailers, which often appear on social media sites, help to spur book sales, in much the same way movie trailers help market Hollywood films, said Nancy Trypuc, senior director for creative services at St. Martin's Press.

"It's a way for us to try to excite people prior to the book's publication,'' said Trypuc. "We find, especially in the paranormal space, that fans are really attracted to things like this."

Among the book trailers that the Other House has made are two for bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon's urban fantasy novels. The trailer for "Retribution" has been seen 125,000 times on YouTube and the one for "The Guardian" 285,000 times. Those trailers are after the jump.

Preview: Art Spiegelman's 'MetaMaus'

Twenty-five years ago, Art Spiegelman's "Maus" was published, opening a window into the depth and seriousness that comics as a form could tell. A chronicle of World War II in which the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats, Spiegelman and his father, a Holocaust survivor, both figure in the text. After the conclusion, "Maus II," came out five years later, Spiegelman was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize.

But that was not the end of "Maus," which has been repackaged as a box set and as a single book. Now, publishing Tuesday, is "MetaMaus," a stunning hardcover book from Spiegelman about the making of "Maus," which includes a multimedia DVD. Spiegelman introduces "MetaMaus" in the video above; keep an eye out for our review of the book, coming soon.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Did the 'Machine Man' book trailer cost an arm and a leg? [video]

Australian author Max Barry is figuring out how to promote his book "Machine Man" in America, because his publisher, Vintage Contemporaries, isn't sending him here on book tour.

He's giving away a galley. He's got magnets. He's willing to Skype you and talk about whatever you want (you can show him your cat), as long as you purchase three copies of his book. And the book trailer above shows to exactly what lengths an author will go to promote his work.

"Machine Man" is about a man who loses a leg and goes looking for a replacement, and the prostheticist/cyberticist who he comes to know.  A version of it was posted in serial format on Barry's website, but the very savvy Charlie Jane Anders at io9 says the book version is "much, much better," proclaiming, "'Machine Man' is the cyborg novel you've been waiting for."

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Paul Jury's "States of Confusion" book trailer gets a million views on YouTube

-- Carolyn Kellogg

 

Paul Jury's 'States of Confusion' book trailer gets a million views on YouTube

 

Los Angeles-based writer Paul Jury's new short video, "50 State Stereotypes in 2 minutes (or something like that)," has already racked up more than 1 million views on YouTube -- not bad for what is essentially a video advertisement for his new book, "States of Confusion: My 19,000-Mile Detour to Find Direction."

The memoir, which came out in mid-May, chronicles Jury's adventures as a recent college grad who drives to all 48 contiguous states in 48 days. And can you believe it? Mayhem ensues.

The book is being packaged as a spirited gift for graduating college seniors -- not the kind of thing I'd normally be interested in, but this video is really funny. Some of my favorite state descriptions include "Alaska: I can see seasonal depression from here," "North Dakota: Somehow even worse than South Dakota" and "Maryland: Have Jeeves bring the lobster boat around." (It's funny because it doesn't make sense!)

When he isn't writing books, Jury works as a viral-video producer, so it's his job to know what will get attention on the Internet. The takeaway?  Be brief and controversial.

Maybe the folks nominated for the worst (and best) of the Moby book trailer awards can copy his super-successful approach.

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Is this the best book trailer of the year or not?

-- Deborah Netburn

 

The good, the bad and the other bad: the Moby book trailer awards

Thursday night in New York City, a group of self-sacrificing book fans will gather for the second annual Moby book trailer awards. The awards, for which I served as a judge last year, reward both the good and the bad in the still-evolving field of book trailers -- a field in which it's a lot easier to find bad than good.

At least they'll be serving beer and wine.

Book trailers are short videos, designed, like movie trailers, to act as a tantalizing teaser for an upcoming book. Occasionally they succeed, as with the intentionally sort of low-fi trailer above for Mary Roach's nonfiction book "Packing for Mars." It helps that it's funny.

And yes, actors playing astronauts making jokes about stinky underarms counts, in the book trailer world, as funny. Watch a few and this one will make you tear up with the pure joy of being alive. 

After the jump, the book trailer for "Pirates: The Midnight Passage" by James R. Hannibal, one of the worst book trailer finalists. It demonstrates many of the ways that a book trailer can go wrong: bad costumes, bad sets, bad animation, and ... why is a pirate talking to cousin Bob?

Jonathan Kellerman's characters are dark, but he's not

Jonathan Kellerman is the author of more than 30 bestselling novels. His popular psychologist Alex Delaware returns in "Mystery," out this week, in which a corpse turns out to be someone he saw at a bar the night before she died. Did her sugar daddy do it?

In Tuesday's L.A. Times, a cheerful Kellerman tells Scott Timberg about the people found in his books:

"I like to create twisted characters," he says with a laugh. "It's just what I do: I'm a psychologist. Ever since I've been a kid I've had a fascination with the darker side of things."

The author, 61, is not a dark guy. Wearing faded jeans and a black mock-turtleneck, he's sitting in a room that includes shelves of books, a painting canvas, a pool table and a view of his ample yard and swimming pool. The life he's made for himself from Southern California's sun-kissed brand of malevolence includes more than 40 million books in print in the U.S. alone and three other published novelists in the family. All that, as well as the vintage guitars he's collected over the years, clearly makes him happy.

Kellerman's very good at writing bestsellers, but his publisher isn't quite so hot at book trailers. See his -- almost a textbook case of how book trailers can go wrong -- after the jump

Exclusive video: stuff white people like in Los Angeles

Christian Lander has followed up his bestselling "Stuff White People Like" with "Whiter Shades of Pale," a coast-to-coast look at the habits and peccadilloes of various cities' white folk. In this exclusive book trailer, Lander and his friend Alex choose which Prius to take as they cruise the streets of Los Angeles playing white person bingo. Will they find girls with bangs? Ray-Bans? Guys with beards? Look out, Intelligentsia, they're heading for you.

They're also headed for Los Angeles. Lander will be signing "Whiter Shade of Pale" at Book Soup at 7 p.m. Nov. 29.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

A 2,400-page modern cooking opus

What do you get when you combine a brilliant computer scientist, a love of food, a multimillionaire's stash of personal wealth, a fascination with cutting-edge cooking technologies and the desire to share that knowledge?

Easy: Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer of Microsoft, and his upcoming, self-published, six volume, 2,400-page cookbook, "Modernist Cuisine." Among the tools in Myhrvold's cooking lab are a centrifuge, a rotary evaporator, homogenizers, a spray dryer and a $250,000 freeze dryer. In an article in Thursday's paper, Betty Hallock calls the cookbook "'The Joy of Cooking' for the Ferran Adrià set."

Myhrvold, a polymath and inventor with a background in space physics and fascinations including paleontology and photography, formed his own publishing company in the midst of writing the book — a tome too daunting for other publishers to tackle. What started as 150 pages or so on sous-vide (cooking vacuum-packed food in water at a relatively low, very stable temperature) snowballed into a magnum opus, the culmination of Myhrvold's obsession with cooking.

A year ago Myhrvold described the book as three volumes and 1,500 pages, but it obviously continued to grow. "If you talk about sous-vide, then you have to talk about food safety, and microbiology, and heat ... ," says Myhrvold, whose co-authors are chefs Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. "Now we laugh that we once thought 800 pages was big.... There are a hundred more things I wish we could have had time to cover."

What it does cover are topics such as (but not limited to) culinary history, the physics of food and water, modern ovens, thickeners, gels, emulsions, foams, plants, starches, fish, poultry and cuts of meat both tender and tough. There is sous-vide, and there is barbecue. More than 600 pages are devoted to recipes, including the "ultimate burger," Indian curries and elaborate plated dishes inspired by or adapted from chefs such as Adrià, Heston Blumenthal and Wylie Dufresne.

The aim "was to explain how cooking actually works, the science behind it," says Myhrvold, who is professorial and inclined to crack wonky jokes.

The book set, which will weigh more than 43 pounds, is currently slated for a Spring 2011 release. "After a lot of soul-searching we decided there was no better way to deliver high-resolution images than print," Myhrvold says. "Why ink? Why paper? Even though I love digital images … it's still better to have paper." His six-volume, printed-on-paper cookbook will retail for $625. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Dr. Nathan Myhrvold explains the use of a superspeed centrifuge. Credit : Mike Kane / For the Times