Okay, so “vook” may not enter the common parlance–but the combination of video plus books may be here to stay.
Faced with little official promotion, writer Kelly Corrigan whipped up a trailer for her memoir The Middle Place, using her home computer and iMovie, and posted a video of herself reading one of her essays on YouTube.
A recent profile of Corrigan in the Washington Post describes the results:
A year later, the book has sold about 80,000 copies in hardcover and another 260,000 in paperback, according to Nielsen BookScan data. It sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 20 weeks, peaking at No. 2. That homemade trailer has been viewed more than 100,000 times. The video of her reading has drawn 4.5 million hits. She’s in Washington on Thursday, speaking at the Congressional Families Cancer Prevention Award luncheon. Then she will plow into more than a dozen paid speaking gigs across the country in the next six weeks.
Corrigan isn’t alone; we’ve seen more and more book trailers, including this recent one for Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply.
Meanwhile, Oprah videoblogs about the first story in her latest book club pick, “An Ex-Mas Feast” from Uwem Akpan’s collection Say You’re One of Them.
