Naysayers have long maintained that nobody really knows if “book trailers” actually motivate readers to go out and buy books, but we’re wondering if it might be time to give that argument a rest. After all, that snippet of film about the two guys who reunited with their lion made A Lion Called Christian one of the most sought-after out-of-print books of 2008. And there’s a five-minute video of Kelly Corrigan reading an essay about women and their lifelong supportive friendships that’s been viewed more than 3 million times in the last month—and maybe, just maybe, has something to do with the paperback edition of Corrigan’s The Middle Place debut on the NY Times bestseller list at #18 last week.
We hear from Hyperion Voice that, as more and more women watched the video and told their friends about it, they saw a major surge in preorders for the paperback, and still more reorders after the official pub date—altogether, they’ve gone back to the presses four times already. And here’s the kicker: That essay wasn’t even in the hardcover edition of The Middle Place.